5 ms·

Google Fiber, powerful MacBooks for the last decade-plus (currently an Apple Silicon machine). Normal gmail takes longer to do its AJAX requests than full-page

Google Fiber, powerful MacBooks for the last decade-plus (currently an Apple Silicon machine). Normal gmail takes longer to do its AJAX requests than full-page loads on "basic HTML" gmail, consistently. Lots longer. It also likes to eat 400-500MB of memory and all the processor cycles it can get, sitting in the background. Inbox was even worse, but I think they fattened up Gmail to match it after Inbox folded so the Inbox-loving people wouldn't suffer from increased performance when they had to switch back. On the plus side they drove me to finally start using real, native mail clients again, so... I guess I can thank them for that.

josefresco 5y ago
Maybe it's a Mac thing? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm on PC and don't experience any of these issues. My Chrome is using <400 MB of memory with two instances of Gmail, G Drive, Google Calendar, Google Ads and a couple more tabs, and is consuming maybe 0-1% of my CPU. I routinely have 4 separate Gmail inboxes open each in their own tab. Compose windows is instantaneous. Opening /viewing email is also nearly instantaneous. Same for search, and navigating between labels/folders.
- handrous 5y ago
  > My Chrome is using <400 MB of memory with two instances of Gmail, G Drive, Google Calendar, Google Ads and a couple more tabs, and is consuming maybe 0-1% of my CPU. This is... very surprising. Are you sure you're accounting for the resources each tab is taking up? They may be listed separately from the core Chrome process in the task manager. I just opened my very boring and nearly empty Google Calendar and that tab alone eats 275MB of memory and idles bouncing around(!) between 0.2 and 1% of a CPU core (which is a lot to be doing nothing, and the way it bounces around tells me timers or WebSockets or some other unfortunate-technology-to-have-added-to-Javascript is involved) [EDIT] for reference, loading an HN page spikes to 100-150MB of memory, then frees memory down to 40-75MB over tens of seconds, and idles around 0.0% of CPU when I'm not interacting with it. That's approximately the base cost of rendering anything and the (mostly memory) overhead of isolating tabs so they can crash independently. Calendar stays at ~275MB and constantly uses some CPU, and I bet if I watched it over time that memory use would grow. [EDIT EDIT] basic HTML gmail hangs out around 170MB but keeps allocating then de-allocing 10-20MB more memory, bouncing up then returning to about 170MB. Then when I click on the link in the footer to load "standard" gmail instead, it spikes to 700MB(!!!) then drops to "merely" about 490MB and hangs out there indefinitely, using 0.4% CPU constantly and spiking to 2.5% periodically, while the tab is backgrounded. You are definitely not looking in the right place for your browser's total resource use.
  - jfrunyon 5y ago
    Good luck loading your email into... what, Outlook? Thunderbird, god forbid? And having it use less... (In fairness, I suppose Mutt's resource usage is probably lower.)
    - handrous 5y ago
      Sure, Apple Mail uses about half a GB, too (same mailbox as I just loaded in Gmail, even). But that's the whole program, with several HTML emails open (a large thread) and my entire inbox scrollable instantly at once. Major view-switches take maybe 300-500ms, and its idle CPU use sits at 0.0%, not a constant 0.4-2.5%. And it doesn't have to reach out to a server to search, so some of that (I'm guessing quite a bit of it, actually) is likely in-memory search cache. That with what amounts to two of gmail's pages open (an email thread view, and a mailbox view, side-by-side—I only had the latter open in Gmail to achieve this much memory use) Unlike Gmail and other google properties, I can leave it open for weeks and forget it's there. It doesn't affect overall system performance—because it's not demanding CPU time and forcing context switches when it's not doing anything. [EDIT] incidentally, has Thunderbird bloated a ton or something? I used to use it on machines with 256MB of memory total and it was not the only thing I had open, and it was totally fine. And yes, HTML email existed then. I was under the impression it was—thanks to neglect, basically—still on good, old tech and the plan to "improve" it to ditch that for bloated modern junk was still on the drawing board.
      - jfrunyon 5y ago
        > Sure, Apple Mail uses about half a GB, too (same mailbox as I just loaded in Gmail, even). But that's the whole program Okay... Gmail is also the whole program? > That with what amounts to two of gmail's pages open (an email thread view, and a mailbox view, side-by-side Huh? You can do that in a single page in gmail, too. > incidentally, has Thunderbird bloated a ton or something? So has everything else. I used to use Chrome because it was less resource-intensive than Firefox (back in Chrome's early days, and circa Firefox 3.5)...
        5y ago

josefresco 5y ago

Maybe it's a Mac thing? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm on PC and don't experience any of these issues. My Chrome is using <400 MB of memory with two instances of Gmail, G Drive, Google Calendar, Google Ads and a couple more tabs, and is consuming maybe 0-1% of my CPU. I routinely have 4 separate Gmail inboxes open each in their own tab. Compose windows is instantaneous. Opening /viewing email is also nearly instantaneous. Same for search, and navigating between labels/folders.

handrous 5y ago
> My Chrome is using <400 MB of memory with two instances of Gmail, G Drive, Google Calendar, Google Ads and a couple more tabs, and is consuming maybe 0-1% of my CPU. This is... very surprising. Are you sure you're accounting for the resources each tab is taking up? They may be listed separately from the core Chrome process in the task manager. I just opened my very boring and nearly empty Google Calendar and that tab alone eats 275MB of memory and idles bouncing around(!) between 0.2 and 1% of a CPU core (which is a lot to be doing nothing, and the way it bounces around tells me timers or WebSockets or some other unfortunate-technology-to-have-added-to-Javascript is involved) [EDIT] for reference, loading an HN page spikes to 100-150MB of memory, then frees memory down to 40-75MB over tens of seconds, and idles around 0.0% of CPU when I'm not interacting with it. That's approximately the base cost of rendering anything and the (mostly memory) overhead of isolating tabs so they can crash independently. Calendar stays at ~275MB and constantly uses some CPU, and I bet if I watched it over time that memory use would grow. [EDIT EDIT] basic HTML gmail hangs out around 170MB but keeps allocating then de-allocing 10-20MB more memory, bouncing up then returning to about 170MB. Then when I click on the link in the footer to load "standard" gmail instead, it spikes to 700MB(!!!) then drops to "merely" about 490MB and hangs out there indefinitely, using 0.4% CPU constantly and spiking to 2.5% periodically, while the tab is backgrounded. You are definitely not looking in the right place for your browser's total resource use.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  Good luck loading your email into... what, Outlook? Thunderbird, god forbid? And having it use less... (In fairness, I suppose Mutt's resource usage is probably lower.)
  - handrous 5y ago
    Sure, Apple Mail uses about half a GB, too (same mailbox as I just loaded in Gmail, even). But that's the whole program, with several HTML emails open (a large thread) and my entire inbox scrollable instantly at once. Major view-switches take maybe 300-500ms, and its idle CPU use sits at 0.0%, not a constant 0.4-2.5%. And it doesn't have to reach out to a server to search, so some of that (I'm guessing quite a bit of it, actually) is likely in-memory search cache. That with what amounts to two of gmail's pages open (an email thread view, and a mailbox view, side-by-side—I only had the latter open in Gmail to achieve this much memory use) Unlike Gmail and other google properties, I can leave it open for weeks and forget it's there. It doesn't affect overall system performance—because it's not demanding CPU time and forcing context switches when it's not doing anything. [EDIT] incidentally, has Thunderbird bloated a ton or something? I used to use it on machines with 256MB of memory total and it was not the only thing I had open, and it was totally fine. And yes, HTML email existed then. I was under the impression it was—thanks to neglect, basically—still on good, old tech and the plan to "improve" it to ditch that for bloated modern junk was still on the drawing board.
    - jfrunyon 5y ago
      > Sure, Apple Mail uses about half a GB, too (same mailbox as I just loaded in Gmail, even). But that's the whole program Okay... Gmail is also the whole program? > That with what amounts to two of gmail's pages open (an email thread view, and a mailbox view, side-by-side Huh? You can do that in a single page in gmail, too. > incidentally, has Thunderbird bloated a ton or something? So has everything else. I used to use Chrome because it was less resource-intensive than Firefox (back in Chrome's early days, and circa Firefox 3.5)...
      - 5y ago