Since there are some people suffering from UI performance reported in the previous topic, I propose an activity to improve UI performance of Joplin. Goals To make more people feel comfortable with the UX. To make more people affordable to use plugins. Judging from the collected information in the previous topic, I estimate the time of note-switching will be halved without any practical loss of maintainability. Notes This activity focuses on the UI response, especially on note-switching. Other performances such as sync are out of the scope. The degree of improvement would be limited to what can be achieved by fixing performance bugs and making small tweaks. Drastic performance improvement would need fundamental changes, but, it would take long time and won't benefit users right away. Relevant issues and technical analysis will be reported in this issue or bug-specific issues. Current Status Ready to be merged (2022-05-01) 6 of 11 PRs were merged and available in v2.9.17. (2022-11-15) The remaining 5 PRs are awaiting reviews. Demo branch is available. (detail). Result 2x to 4x faster (= comfortable for most PCs) (detail) [image]

Progress Report #4 Now, milestone 3 is nearing completion, and finally, 9 PRs have been made. It's discussed here. [ui-improvement-progress4] The chart shows: From milestone 2 to 3, in general, about 40% of time is reduced. The final performance is about 2-4 times faster than the performance before this activity.

I've prepared a demo branch for those who would like to try the improved UI response. (Note: For those who can build a binary from source codes) GitHub - ken1kob/joplin: Joplin - an open source note taking and to-do... quick-slim-note Joplin - an open source note taking and to-do application with synchronization capabilities for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. Forum: https://discourse.joplinapp.org/ - GitHub - ken1kob/jo... It is based on the latest stable Joplin version 2.7.15 and contains 11 PRs in the above three milestones. Enjoy!

Result The result of this improvement activity is illustrated here. [note-switching-time-after2] The chart is based on the above survey summary chart. It shows where the performance of the reference PC (Core i5-4670, CPU Mark=5403, Win10) (white circles) is in the range of user PCs. Simultaneously, it shows where the improved performance of the reference PC (black stars) is. According to the chart, it can be estimated that most PCs will have acceptable performance (less than 1 sec response) by applying PRs proposed in this activity.

Tested it with the patched repo, and the response speed improvement is obvious with 9+ plugins. Amazing work! I just wondered why obsidian is much smoother than Joplin when switching notes and found this post. Hope all the PRs can be merged as soon as possible since I cannot build the *.dmg package successfully.

Just some tips for others who want to build the *.dmg package on macOS: If you face the following error message during yarn run dist: gyp: name 'openssl_fips' is not defined while evaluating condition 'openssl_fips != ""' in binding.gyp while trying to load binding.gyp, then you can try to build with node@16 instead. I also tried to merge all the commits in 2.8.0+ version to the patched repo. Most of the conflict files are easy to solve except for app-desktop/gui/NoteList/NoteList.tsx. It seems this file is almost completely rewritten.

Tested it with the patched repo, and the response speed improvement is obvious with 9+ plugins. Amazing work! Thanks for your impression report! I just wondered why obsidian is much smoother than Joplin when switching notes and found this post. As you said, current Joplin seems to be slower than other note-taking apps. I've also heard opinions like "Why is Joplin so much slower than other Electron apps?" However, it can be at least as fast as other apps. Quick UI response is a very important factor for note-taking apps. When compared to other apps, I'm concerned that the current slowness of Joplin's UI is detracting from its appeal.

A new demo branch is prepared for those who would like to try the improved UI response. GitHub - ken1kob/joplin: Joplin - an open source note taking and to-do... quick-slim-note Joplin - an open source note taking and to-do application with synchronization capabilities for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. Forum: https://discourse.joplinapp.org/ - GitHub - ken1kob/jo... It is based on the latest pre-release Joplin version 2.8.8 and contains 11 PRs in the above three milestones. The demo based on 2.7.15 is still available here. Enjoy!

[image] ken1kob: It is based on the latest pre-release Joplin version 2.8.8 and contains 11 PRs in the above three milestones. Now, 2.8.8 becomes the latest stable version, and this (2.8.8) improvement demo can be used as is.

It's been amazing 2 months since I tried quick-slim branch and I've decided to share my feedback with y'all :relieved: For many, performance boost in this branch might seem minor thing, but for me personally, it made me truly appreciate so much more of Joplin. Particularly, I was able to install and use a lot more of our great plugins. With little incremental impact on performance that felt quite liberating! Since it got snappier, I noticed that I naturally spend more engaged time with Joplin: writing more detailed notes, organising notebook tree, saving and extending documentation. It very nearly became my go-to application for anything of substance. In this mindset, like many other members of our community, I even started to write little scripts and snippets helping me achieving my goals. In social aspect, this improvement made me sure that I can recommend Joplin to older folks who often have quite outdated hardware and at the same time, are easily put off by minor inconvenience. In conclusion, I want express my gratitude to all contributors: you're truly making my life and lives of my loved ones, easier and better. Thank you :clap: Testing notes Since changes in quick-slim branch involved switching between notes, notebooks and reducing rendered updates, I've been attempting to force it to get stuck on previously rendered note. How: deleting notebook with currently focused note, transition from empty notebook, deleting tags, deleting last note in a tag list, using go-to, using favourites plugin, resolving conflicts, using internal links with # ancors and external links Result: all passed I've stumbled upon some flaky weirdness with notelist focus shortcut, but couldn't either localise or attribute it to the specific Joplin version.

when merge? :wink: Thank y'all so much for all your contributions! :pray:

Improving UI response

Development

ken1kob 11 July 2022 11:26 21

Now, 5 PRs of all 11 PRs are merged, and some part of this improvement can be tried in v2.9.1.

Topic		Replies	Views
Desktop UI is too slow to work efficiently Lounge	47	6075	16 April 2022
Performance issue Support	22	1007	18 April 2024
Slowness and sometimes “the window is not responding” error message Support	21	1009	1 May 2024
Testing new release with usability improvements and new Welcome notes Beta Testing	20	2314	28 February 2019
The greatest drawback of Joplin today Features	47	11152	18 June 2023

Improving UI response

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