Terrible iCloud CPU performance even with simple edits to one note
Completed
I have 6,000 notes (edit: all plain text, no PDFs, images etc.) totalling 25MB on disc, on a (fast) 2012 Mac Mini running High Sierra 10.13.6
I moved the notes to an iCloud folder, they took a few minutes to initially sync, with a lot of CPU activity, as you'd expect.
However now, typing a few words in any note causes the iCloud 'bird' process on macOS High Sierra (10.13.6) to spin up and - looking at the output of `brctl log --wait --shorten` - seemingly reindex absolutely everything; the CPU is so high it causes the fans to spin up.
- Is there a workaround for this? (I appreciate it's not an NVUltra thing)
- Is it much better behaved in later versions of macOS?
- or should I just abandon iCloud? (it doesn't seem like many of you have)
As I use a VPN often, I did also check it was still an issue when connected "normally".
-
So, I shifted everything into Dropbox and, as expected, the performance there when making small changes is great.
0 -
I use a 2014 Mini running 10.15 and a 2018 Air running 10.14. I have all but stopped using Dropbox in favor of iCloud, especially for nvUltra folders. I have no trouble with it.
I created a new folder and duplicated a collection of approx 1000 notes and stripped out PDF's, images, etc. This resulted in 6079 files totaling 29.9 Mb (nominally, but 8,303,631 bytes for the folder using Finder's Get Info. Presumably this accounts for block sizes on disk??)
When I edit, nvUltra's CPU usage remains low. I do see that `bird` and `cloudd` pop up in Activity Monitor and use some CPU (on order of 20% each), but I would not have noticed had I not checked.
Using the `brctl` command, I do see a lot of activity, but the only filename I can see is the one I am editing. There are a fair number of `getAttributeValues:forItemAtURL` entries, with several fields marked `<private>`. I don't see anything to indicated that everything is being reindexed, as you suggest
>>>>
(did you mean that nvUltra is reindexing? Or macOS? Assuming you're not using an out of date version of nvUltra, it does not reindex the entire folder when you edit a file. I just re-confirmed that with XCode's debugger.)
<<<<
nvUltra is completely agnostic as to where it's files are stored -- the same code happens no matter what (whether a folder is in iCloud, Dropbox, or your local device.)
As for abandoning iCloud, that is of course up to you. For various reasons, I am more in the abandoning Dropbox camp. Especially since Dropbox for iOS is so limited that nvUltra for iOS won't really work. But it works great with iCloud (though 6000 files on an iOS device might be pushing things a bit.... ;). But more to come on that later.
You can slow down file saves by changing the Undo Coalescing setting in the Pro preferences. (e.g. ensure it as at sentence or paragraph).
0 -
Thanks for the reply (and for pointing out the Undo Coalescing setting)
No, nvUltra wasn't reindexing and I've found it pretty reliable so far; I see the progress bar when it indexes a folder for the first time, or if I restart after clearing the cache, and it's all done in about 20 seconds.
What I kept getting was a small change to one file apparently trigger a check of everything by iCloud, when viewing the log with brctl, there were lots of diffs and messages saying files were unchanged, but no errors that I spotted, and at the same time a huge amount of CPU activity (well over 100%) for a minute or two, which seemed ridiculous given nvUltra wouldn't have touched any of the other files.
For what it's worth, I don't have much else on my iCloud storage already. I should probably mention that the macOS language is set to French (because I'm learning it), but quite how that would affect any of this…
re: a sensible maximum number of files, what I may end up doing is splitting them into multiple notebooks using the folder navigator, so I can limit how many i need to load on the phone. The macOS search in nvUltra seems easily as fast as it was in nvAlt :)
0 -
There have been a lot of changes to indexing with the "Mark II" beta, and some other tweaks related to indexing iCloud folders.
Are you still having trouble with this? You should be able to use large folders without trouble now.
0 -
I switched to Dropbox and haven't moved back since. I'm up to 6,600 notes in one folder now and the performance is still fine.
0 -
If you go back to iCloud and have trouble, let me know.
Thanks!
0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
6 comments