4 ms·

When you say Pop could be more lightweight, are you talking about CPU or memory usage? Also, do you keep Slack / Microsoft Teams / Dropbox / 1Password / VSCode

When you say Pop could be more lightweight, are you talking about CPU or memory usage? Also, do you keep Slack / Microsoft Teams / Dropbox / 1Password / VSCode always running, and do you have the same concern with those apps or is it something unique to Pop? Performance is definitely a priority for us, so understanding where you're feeling the bloat would be really helpful to us.

tfsh 5y ago
Not OP, but with the apps you've mentioned (and other Electron apps), I'd be less likely to keep them running (and would prevent them from opening at login) due to their outsized resource impact. Which in turn decreases user retention and my ability to recommend it to others. To add to that screen sharing and video calling is already resource intensive, so whilst the argument could be made - what's another 500mb of ram, I'd expect the client to be as optimised and light weight as possible, because a system under strain is no longer "blazing fast".
nawgz 5y ago
1Password and Dropbox being on Electron seems absurd. Regardless, you kind of hit on the point - Slack & VSCode are basically non-optional, maybe for other people it's some other combo. Pop, on the other hand, only has potential to be "non-optional" for collaborative work. Thus, given that real-time collaboration is not the standard way of working, being a resource hog on the level of "non-optional" apps means you will be shut off first for most users.
- jsherwani 5y ago
  This is a good point. We definitely want it to be a no-brainer for people to keep Pop running. One idea may be for us to look into relinquishing resources while running in the background, which could be a best of both worlds solution.
Cu3PO42 5y ago
For me personally, memory usage has been a big concern with the growing number of Electron apps. CPU usage on well-behaved Electron apps in idle seems mostly negligible or at least not significantly worse than on native apps. But memory is a different story. I don't always get to work with machines with "enough" memory, so I don't keep any apps with a larger memory footprint (let's say anything above 50MB) running longer than necessary. More often than not I will try to just use the web app, which will at least not load "yet another copy of Chrome". Where feasible I will also simply switch to an alternative. Not to backseat engineer too much, but maybe you could look into a smaller native component that can run in the background to listen for incoming "calls" and only loads up Electron (or maybe a native webview) when the user wants to actively use the app. All of that said, it looks like you have a solid product and I wish you success with it. EDIT: It appears that a year ago when your product was still named screen, I also provided some feedback which you acted upon swiftly, so I'm optimistic you'll figure this out as well :-)
- jsherwani 5y ago
  This is a really fair point, and we will look into seeing what we can do to alleviate this resource usage when in the background.
anotherevan 5y ago
I wonder if you could write a small native app for the presence component that launches the main electron app when needed.
danellis 5y ago
> When you say Pop could be more lightweight, are you talking about CPU or memory usage? Memory usage. I haven't noticed an issue with CPU usage, because I usually only open it briefly and tend not to be doing anything else intensive during that time. If I kept it open for video chat while I was working, maybe it would be an issue, but I currently use Messenger (in the browser, not the app) or Discord. > Slack / Microsoft Teams / Dropbox / 1Password / VSCode Slack was definitely a big problem for memory usage, so I don't use that much anymore. VSCode I only open while I'm editing. I wish it worked better over an X connection for that. Dropbox I allow to keep running on my main Mac (although its memory usage is ridiculous for what it does), but only load it as needed on my Mac mini. I use Teams, but that's on a work laptop that only runs Teams and Outlook. Discord is the only Electron app that I keep open nearly all the time.
- jsherwani 5y ago
  Thanks for the details! Based on the feedback today, we're going to look into how we can reduce memory usage overall (especially when idle), and CPU usage especially when screen sharing. We already modify Electron, so we may be able to work out a good middle ground that reduces the footprint significantly, while still giving us the advantages of a shared codebase across our 4 platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, web).

tfsh 5y ago

Not OP, but with the apps you've mentioned (and other Electron apps), I'd be less likely to keep them running (and would prevent them from opening at login) due to their outsized resource impact. Which in turn decreases user retention and my ability to recommend it to others. To add to that screen sharing and video calling is already resource intensive, so whilst the argument could be made - what's another 500mb of ram, I'd expect the client to be as optimised and light weight as possible, because a system under strain is no longer "blazing fast".

nawgz 5y ago

1Password and Dropbox being on Electron seems absurd. Regardless, you kind of hit on the point - Slack & VSCode are basically non-optional, maybe for other people it's some other combo. Pop, on the other hand, only has potential to be "non-optional" for collaborative work. Thus, given that real-time collaboration is not the standard way of working, being a resource hog on the level of "non-optional" apps means you will be shut off first for most users.

jsherwani 5y ago
This is a good point. We definitely want it to be a no-brainer for people to keep Pop running. One idea may be for us to look into relinquishing resources while running in the background, which could be a best of both worlds solution.

Cu3PO42 5y ago

For me personally, memory usage has been a big concern with the growing number of Electron apps. CPU usage on well-behaved Electron apps in idle seems mostly negligible or at least not significantly worse than on native apps. But memory is a different story. I don't always get to work with machines with "enough" memory, so I don't keep any apps with a larger memory footprint (let's say anything above 50MB) running longer than necessary. More often than not I will try to just use the web app, which will at least not load "yet another copy of Chrome". Where feasible I will also simply switch to an alternative. Not to backseat engineer too much, but maybe you could look into a smaller native component that can run in the background to listen for incoming "calls" and only loads up Electron (or maybe a native webview) when the user wants to actively use the app. All of that said, it looks like you have a solid product and I wish you success with it. EDIT: It appears that a year ago when your product was still named screen, I also provided some feedback which you acted upon swiftly, so I'm optimistic you'll figure this out as well :-)

jsherwani 5y ago
This is a really fair point, and we will look into seeing what we can do to alleviate this resource usage when in the background.

anotherevan 5y ago

I wonder if you could write a small native app for the presence component that launches the main electron app when needed.

danellis 5y ago

> When you say Pop could be more lightweight, are you talking about CPU or memory usage? Memory usage. I haven't noticed an issue with CPU usage, because I usually only open it briefly and tend not to be doing anything else intensive during that time. If I kept it open for video chat while I was working, maybe it would be an issue, but I currently use Messenger (in the browser, not the app) or Discord. > Slack / Microsoft Teams / Dropbox / 1Password / VSCode Slack was definitely a big problem for memory usage, so I don't use that much anymore. VSCode I only open while I'm editing. I wish it worked better over an X connection for that. Dropbox I allow to keep running on my main Mac (although its memory usage is ridiculous for what it does), but only load it as needed on my Mac mini. I use Teams, but that's on a work laptop that only runs Teams and Outlook. Discord is the only Electron app that I keep open nearly all the time.

jsherwani 5y ago
Thanks for the details! Based on the feedback today, we're going to look into how we can reduce memory usage overall (especially when idle), and CPU usage especially when screen sharing. We already modify Electron, so we may be able to work out a good middle ground that reduces the footprint significantly, while still giving us the advantages of a shared codebase across our 4 platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, web).