Tree slows to a a crawl after intensive use
Many bugs I encounter the engineers will likely not see, and most users wont see, as I am a power user that will add hundred of names and sources, clicking in quick succession, and may use the site for several hours straight some days. So I post this knowing that if I get any replies at all they are probably going to be "we cannot reproduce this" or "I never have this problem" or "try clearing your cache." Such replies are painful to hear because they do not help me at all, but rather they devalue my comments and my real lived user experience. But here it goes anyway…
What happens is I am intensely using the tree, loading through hundreds of pages, uploading many memories, attaching numerous sources, fixing wrongly merged families, sourcing the resulting families, etc., all very accurately as an expert user I assure you. And then my browser slows to a crawl. I live with it for awhile, just waiting the second or two second extra after every click I make for the next screen to load, or for my cursor to be accepted in the box where I am adding a new name to the tree, but it gets slower until it starts to hang for a few seconds with each action. Every simply action takes a complex series of clicks, often including several clicks for adding just one person, and several more for just one source, and several more for just one memory, etc. I am used to that. I am quick on the mouse and quick on the keyboard. I am an expert probably in the top 1% of users. My problem is not how I use the site. My problem is that it slows to a halt. I have to close my tab or entire browser and load FamilySearch again, and when I do that it goes back to normal speed.
This leads me to hypothesize that the site is somehow programmed in a way that caches more data the more you use it, without deleting older data from the browser. I am not a computer scientist by training, but I have talked to some, and this is just what I think may be happening. It may be getting my browser cache or RAM or something all filled up somehow, and once I close the window and open it again it is okay again. But I can be forced to do this multiple times in a day, and it is not convenient.
If this happens to you also please comment because I would appreciate knowing I am not alone in this struggle. If it does not happen to you just ignore this post. I do not need people saying "it doesn't happen to me" as that makes me feel devalued.
Answers
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The mods commonly suggest to delete Temporary Cached Files (not cookies, history, settings). It's a good first-line suggestion. When I start running upwards to 600 tabs, I wind up cleaning it w/ some regularity.
If the issue persists, an address bar restart can ease that bit.
chrome://restartfor Chromium browsers. For Firefox,about:profilesand choose Restart Normally.1 -
"I have to close my tab or entire browser and load FamilySearch again, and when I do that it goes back to normal speed."
I can see the possibility of your RAM being filled up with the browser cache. Do you know how much memory/RAM you have on your computer? Do you know if you have the option to increase it?
Like you said, your usage level is likely at a pace that other users wouldn't be at, so your hardware requirements are probably higher too.
I mention RAM instead of hard drive or SSD space, simply because when you close and reopen your browser, you mention everything going back to normal, for a time.
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I like this one! I might save the chrome one as a bookmark and use it as a button press.
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I, too, have run into many problems on FS if I spend too long at it. To minimize them, I regularly exit FS, clear all caches, cookies, etc., and then get back in. However, problems often show up with little warning (e.g., longer response time); I usually just get hung. My whole computer freezes and I have to reboot. This has been happening more and more in recent months, including two days ago. I have cut way back on the work I do on FS because it has become so frustrating to use the site.
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Could a mod confirm that the engineers are aware of these problems please (flagged accordingly).
I imagine they can identify the activities/timings of the specific users involved in this discussion, to help them debug the problem(s).
I guess it is possible there is throttling going on, whether by design or not.
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I have 16 GB RAM which as far as I know is still overkill for genealogy even when using the sites as intensively as I do some days. This matches the amount in of RAM the most cutting-edge video game consoles like PS5 which need a lot more RAM for those graphics-intensive games than genealogy usually needs.
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16 GB is pretty decent, although I see 32 and 64 on the higher end these days. My 2000-era training mind would have been utterly amazed. You might want to open up task manager when you have close to your high level of tabs and pages open and see how much of the RAM is being used up, or perhaps see if the CPU load is running high with that number of pages open.
Even if upgrading your own equipment is a no-go for now, letting the dev staff here know the numbers might be helpful. Perhaps there is some client-side code that could be tweaked, some web page operations that really aren't needed, that can be pruned, etc.
One might wonder about how so much RAM or even CPU could be occupied by genealogy web pages, but if there are inefficient operations or calls going on, over and over, then multiplied by hundreds of pages, it could turn very resource consuming.
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I'm focusing on:
"My whole computer freezes and I have to reboot. This has been happening more and more in recent months, including two days ago. "
That raises red flags of something else happening with your computer, at least in my mind. Can you or someone else do a browser reinstall, and/or run commands to repair Windows (if that's what you're running)? I'm not thinking that anything is world-ending, but software corruption does occur, and can be addressed so that your computer experience isn't so frustrating.
The Windows repair command I'm thinking of is the System File Checker, but I'd want to make sure the person understood what I was saying here on the comment before I recommended any further. There's also a follow up command to System File Checker.
My one remaining thing I'd check, again with the person that understands Windows repair, is a check disk, if you have an HDD (NOT an SSD).
Sorry, trying to avoid getting too technical, but also trying to give something effective here.
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I have run into the same problem when a lot of browser tabs are open. When your browser starts to slow down, check the memory usage on your computer. In Windows, launch the Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL > Task Manager). You will likely see that you are using virtually 100% of your computer's memory. I think FamilySearch Family Tree tabs are quite memory intensive (e.g., auto-updating based on information changed in other tabs). So, the problem is not really a FamilySearch problem, but rather memory limitations on your computer.
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I think the OP encounters this problem just in a single browser tab - @Michael W. McCormick please confirm.
If there are memory leaks, FS needs to find and eradicate them.
We haven't had any mod input yet (I did flag for it on 27 Feb, now tagging @Ashlee C. on belt and braces principle) - hopefully once they return from RootsTech we will hear from them.
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In his case, he might just have the single tab open, as Mandy said, but open for a long time, cycling through many tasks. But if processes aren't being closed on the client/server front as they aren't needed any longer, then that can add up.
So, like you side, using Task Manager to check the RAM/Memory usage and also the CPU usage, is a good way to see if that's happening, and confirm that here. That allows for information to be passed to the devs.
Adding more memory is a nice way to future-proof the computer, of course, but that takes a little bit of money.
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