Web App is very slow to respond to typing and mouse clicks
This issue has been going on for at least a year or two. Honestly, it has existed since I started using Simplifi, but I just haven't reported it in the past.
The issue is that any interaction with the Transactions Register in Simplifi is horribly slow. Every mouse click takes 3-5 seconds to respond, and it is the same with text entry or editing.
For example, clicking on a Payee to edit that field... The initial mouse click takes a few seconds to register that I clicked on the Payee, and then it's a few more seconds until it will respond to keyboard entry. And then it's a few seconds after I click away from the field to save it.
All in all, it makes using Simplifi a horrendous experience (and very frustrating).
I gather that the issue here is because this is a web application and not a desktop application. Has any thought been given to moving Simplifi to be a desktop application instead?
Or is there anything you can do to make the web application less painful to use?
EDIT:
I just tried using Microsoft Edge for Simplifi and I am not experiencing the slowness that I experience in Chrome. This is very strange, because Edge is based on Chromium (which is what Chrome is derived from).
I'm going to continue trying to use Simplifi in Microsoft Edge to see if it works ok, or if the interactions slow down at some point. But, I wonder if others experiencing slowness in the web app are also using Google Chrome.
EDIT2:
I uninstalled the Simplifi App from Google Chrome, and in doing so, it asked me if I wanted to clear out everything in Chrome for the simplifimoney.com site. I said yes.
Then I reinstalled Simplifi in Chrome and it is now a bit speedier again. Mouse clicks are responsive and text entry is as well. It's comparable to what I describe above using Microsoft Edge.
So it seems that perhaps as you use the app over time, it builds up some sort of 'cruft' in Chrome that needs to be periodically cleared out, otherwise performance of the web application gets REALLY bad.
Let me know what your thoughts are on this observation.
Thanks,
Perry
Best Answer
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An additional observation… The Simplifi Web App seems to be more responsive in Microsoft Edge than it does in Google Chrome (regardless of whether or not they are both in Incognito profiles). I wonder if there is something specific about Chrome that causes the app to be less responsive, or for the server updates to take more time when you are updating fields in the transaction register.
Has anyone in engineering benchmarked native Google Chrome compared to Microsoft's version of it (Edge)?
That said, even in Edge there is a noticable delay when updating anything that requires the webapp to talk back to the server. It just seems like that delay is slightly less in Edge than it is in Chrome.
Also thanks for the pointer to:
I've chimed in there and submitted feedback as you requested in that thread.
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Answers
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Hello @perrynmyers,
Thanks for posting to the Community regarding this behavior, although I'm sorry to hear of the latency you're experiencing in the Simplifi Web App.
Based on your description, it definitely sounds like a caching issue. Any time you experience latency in one browser and not another, a good rule of thumb would be to clear the cache and cookies of the problematic browser; this usually gets things running smoothly again.
-Coach Natalie0 -
Thanks @Coach Natalie. Just to clarify though... I did not have to clear the entire browser cache/cookies to fix the issue.
I only had to clear out any data in the browser specific to the simplifimoney.com domain. It seems like over time Simplifi caches too much and the cache associated with the simplifimoney.com domain is what specifically needs to be cleared.
To note, I've never encountered an issue like this with any other website or web application. It seems fairly specific to Simplifi.1 -
Wanted to give some more feedback here as I continue to test and experience the app slowness described above.
I have created a dedicated Google Chrome profile just for Simplifi, so in that Chrome Profile it is the only site or app that I use. Even with that, I find that there is a lag/slowness when using the app that makes it frustrating.
The lag comes whenever you have to take an action in the UI that results in data having to be sent back to the server. It seems that when a server update is triggered (adding a Note to a transaction, changing a Category, marking a transaction as Reviewed, etc) it causes the entire app to become non-responsive until the server update is accomplished.
Making a series of updates then becomes very frustrating, as you have to make a single update, wait for the server response, then wait for the UI to become responsive, and then make the next update. Multiply this times 10 or 20, and you can understand why this might be frustrating.
Have you considered a model where updates are done locally and then batched to be sent in a single update to the server rather than every single UI interaction requiring a server update?
Thanks,
Perry
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Hello @perrynmyers,
Thanks for following up!
Although I'm unsure of what the Product Team has considered or may be considering as far as updates with the server go, I do know that they're working on latency issues for both the Mobile and Web Apps. They are particularly working on issues with the Mobile App (please see here), and issues after importing years' worth of transactions (please see here).
Hopefully the current changes they're making help improve performance all the way around. In the meantime, you may consider continuing to clear the Simplifi site's cache and cookies since this seems to work for you. 🙂
-Coach Natalie
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Thanks @Coach Natalie. Clearing the cache seemed to work for other performance issues, but not for the server lag describe above. No amount of cache clearing seems to solve that. Again, I think the issue has more to do with sending the data to the upstream servers and waiting for a response, and gating the UI interaction waiting on that response. (Sort of like Blocking I/O vs. Non-Blocking I/O in the kernel).
Another similar example of this is when I start a new session with the webapp. When I open it, it immediately tries to refresh data from my set of accounts. Why it is doing this, the webapp becomes nearly non-responsive to mouse-clicks or any sort of UI interaction. This is especially challenging when a prompt comes up for 2FA, since the app won't even let me click the button for requesting a 2FA code. After several minutes after the account refresh, the UI will eventually become responsive again. But by that time, the accounts needing 2FA have all timed out. So, I need to manually refresh those.
If the engineers are already working on some fixes for the webapp latency, I'm happy to wait for those changes to be pushed out and to test them to see if they resolve this specific issue. Any ETA on when those might hit Beta users of the webapp?
Thanks!
Perry
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Hello @perrynmyers,
Have you tried launching Simplifi and performing account refreshes from a different browser, by chance? Or in incognito/private mode? If not, please give this a try so we can determine if the issue is browser-specific.
When it comes to the latency issues that are being worked on for both the Mobile and Web Apps, I'd suggest following the above-linked posts for updates (here for Mobile and here for Web).
Thanks!
-Coach Natalie
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From an Incognito launch of Chrome, the startup issue (with refreshing accounts) appears to not be there.
But the server update delays with updating individual transactions (mark as reviewed, categories, payees) still appears to be there. That much is consistent everywhere. But like you say, maybe the updates engineering has planned will address those issues.
One thing I've noticed though is that clearing the cache helps somewhat, but within a day or so things slow down again. So, I'm going to leave that incognito window open and refresh the screen periodically to see if I can replicate the account refresh slowness in the Incognito browser, if I just give it enough time.
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