zotero slow to add files into the app

mikolajmadeksza
ive recently been experiencing multiple problems with zotero's speed but one of the most annoying one is adding files to the app and moving them between folders, with both actions taking as much as 30-60 seconds per file. Is there any possible way to make this faster?

my stats:
M4 air, macos Sequoia
a lot of free space on zotero storage
library is synced
>400 pdf's in my library (all journal articles)

thanks in advance
  • mjthoraval
    Which version of Zotero are you using?
    Can you reproduce the problem with all plugins disabled?
    What is the size of one typical PDF file for which you see this long addition time?

    How do you add the files to Zotero?
    https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero
    Do you attach the file as a child attachment to an existing item, or as a standalone attachment? If adding as a child item, does it make a difference if the item already has other attachments or not, or whether it is expanded in the item tree?
    Does this time change depending where you add them (collection or library)?

    It may be useful to provide a Debug ID for reproducing the addition of a single file taking a long time:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output
  • mikolajmadeksza
    hey, tyvm for such a quick reply!

    version 7.0.21

    yes i can reproduce it, heres a vid: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dw2MWfy_92YkOCRw2xHQtRbHhR9iostH?usp=share_link

    it took 20s for it to read a single 0.2mb pdf. it gets worse with multiple at once.
    and then when dragging it into a folder my cursor becomes a spinning circle which can also take good 20s when dragging multiple files

    i always do it like on the vid, or if its open access i paste the doi into the magic wand, then it takes even longer

    it is blazing fast when i add a file into an existing item

    the time seems to be the same regardless of the location

    and it doesnt seem to 'warm up'. same files take roughly same time when i delete and re-upload

    debug output from the exact upload shown on the vid: D438402570

    i realize im being a bit of a princess, but these 30s breaks add up and mess with my flow
    but if theres nothing to be done and its normal behaviour LMK, ill be more at ease with it :)
  • dstillman
    edited today at 5:35am
    OK, that's not "adding" files — that's specifically the PDF metadata retrieval process that happens after you add a PDF directly. For some reason, Crossref, one of the main repositories of DOI metadata, is very slow to return data for that specific DOI from its main lookup service. You would've seen the exact same delay pasting that DOI into Add Item by Identifier (the magic wand). For now, we've switched back to the lookup service we were using previously, which returns data for that DOI instantaneously, so this should be fast again. (Unfortunately we switched away at Crossref's recommendation due to the older service's unreliability, so we'll need to contact them and see why their main lookup service is being so slow for that DOI.)

    For the delay with dragging, update to 7.0.22 via Help → Check for Updates, which should fix it. (Chicago styles were just updated to a major new version of the style manual, and the new styles are much more complex and slower to process, causing drags to slow down for people with a Chicago style set as the Quick Copy style, as one is by default. To be clear, though, that delay would've been 2–3 seconds (as it was in your video), not 30-60.)
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