How to debug slow PDF load times?

[cgrunenberg]

@syntagm

I tried to click around more and see if I could trigger it manually somehow in a reproducible way, and think that the See Also & Classify window is causing a lot of the hanging. (I’m guessing the results aren’t loaded async but the UI blocks until all results are returned)

That’s right. Which settings do you use in the inspector?

Also, I noticed that when I leave DEVONthink open for a while (days), the memory usage climbs up to ~2gb until I restart it, up from around 300MB after it’s freshly started.

Data is loaded on demand and especially stuff like see also, classify or verifying needs most of the data.

[syntagm]

@cgrunenberg

That’s right. Which settings do you use in the inspector?

I have the default settings on, so “Based on Content”, and “Current database only” is unchecked.

I usually classify from the Global Inbox into the other databases directly

[cgrunenberg]

How many words (both total and unique) do your databases contain, see File > Database Properties?

[syntagm]

My biggest one is an archival database where I move old things into for future reference, that isn’t synced to my mobile devices:

This is the one that’s probably slowing down Classify & See Also the most. (Although still would like to be possible to classify things into the archive if possible )

The others are < 2000 items, and < 200,000 words

[cgrunenberg]

What kind of Mac do you use and how RAM does it have? Especially the first usage of See Also & Classify might require some time as the data gets loaded on demand but afterwards it should be a lot faster.

[syntagm]

My 2 main devices are:

• M1 Mac Mini, 16GB RAM - this is my desktop and the computer that has DEVONthink running almost 24/7 for bonjour sync and file rules
• M1 Max Macbook Pro 64GB RAM - this is my on-the-go machine. Obviously DEVONthink is a lot snappier here

After learning that my big database is likely causing some of the issues here I went through some folders and excluded them from See Also & Classify (with some AppleScript voodoo because recursive exclusions aren’t a thing yet). It made things somewhat better, but dealing with that huge database full of archival data in general isn’t the snappiest.

Are there best practices what to do with these cases? I didn’t expect that it would cause performance issues, so I treated it as the place to put everything that I need to access someday in the future in it. For example, am I better off creating a separate database that doesn’t ever need Classify, and disable it on a database level? Like when dealing with a mailbox import folder structure?

[cgrunenberg]

@syntagm

Are there best practices what to do with these cases? I didn’t expect that it would cause performance issues, so I treated it as the place to put everything that I need to access someday in the future in it. For example, am I better off creating a separate database that doesn’t ever need Classify, and disable it on a database level? Like when dealing with a mailbox import folder structure?

The easiest solutions are probably to either limit the inspector to the current database whenever it’s possible and/or to close not always required databases.