
Gmail: the slowest website I'm using - nyxtom
Has anyone else noticed how incredibly terrible Gmail has become lately? In addition to a slow loading splash loading screen, the navigation isn&#x27;t nearly as responsive as it used to be. Inbox was somewhat better when it was available, but I look back at classic gmail as being really responsive. I&#x27;ve personally switched to protonmail but I still use my gmail account to look up old information and maintain a few things. Doing this I just use the basic html page which works fantastic (I just wish I had the keyboard navigation on top).<p>Aside from Gmail, there are a lot of SWA these days that load tons of javascript and use loading splash screens (a lot of SASS) apps. I reference Gmail because of all the webapps I expected to never be slow, Gmail was supposed to be one of them. That being said, I&#x27;m thankful that I can even use the Basic HTML option at all and I wish more websites allowed this option.
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rbinv
Yes. Most actions have become so slow that quickly closing the Gmail tab after
doing something (e.g. sending an email) triggers the onunload confirmation
dialog most of the time. That didn't happen nearly as often with the old
version.

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cakes
I've also started experiencing that even though all actions are cleared and I
can navigate away that sometimes those actions "didn't take" and I'd be
cleaning up emails for the N-th time.

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0898
It's interminably slow.

Worse, I have multiple accounts – and it always defaults to the 'wrong' one,
which means I have to go through the splash screen all over again.

I'm moving to Fastmail as soon as I have time to switch things over.

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tshannon
I believe it defaults to the account you sign into first, so you can log out
of all of your gmail accounts, and log into what your want your "default" to
be first.

If you're using chrome and logged into your google account on chrome, I think
you're already logged in.

I don't know how you'd do this if you didn't want your chrome account to be
your "default" account. I personal use firefox.

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alexeiz
It's funny, just yesterday night I was trying to send a quick reply in Gmail.
I clicked on the mail I wanted to reply to. Gmail said "Loading..." I waited
and waited, how long can it take to load a single mail message? Then as a last
resort I went to inbox.google.com and wrote my reply in seconds. I find it
ironic that Google wants to abolish Inbox in favor of Gmail, when Gmail became
worse than Inbox has ever been.

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copperx
My solution was to use a machine that's similar to what Googlers use. Even
though devs at Google use 64GB RAM and Xeon chips, I've found that an Eight-
core Ryzen chip at 4GHz with 32GB of RAM on Linux makes Gmail fly. I can run
and work with Mutt efficiently on a Raspberry Pi, but I need an desktop
machine to make Gmail work fast. We live in interesting times.

Gmail is unusable in my 2012 MacBook Pro. I wonder how Gmail works on low-end
Chromebooks.

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ariwilson
I use Gmail on my 2014 Acer Chromebook C720 (2GB of RAM). Works fine. Takes a
while to load initially but I leave the tab fine and it works fine for
searching, reading, composing, working with labels, etc.

~~~
antoineMoPa
Same device, same year, more impatient. Just like most of the web apps I have
to use (facebook,slack), it feels terribly slow compared to what I have been
used to before (before what? before. the web constantly gets slower).
Meanwhile, I run crouton on the same device and can do amazing stuff with
blender, git, emacs, latex, python, etc.

Weird how the web allows seemingly simple task to become so performance
intensive for the computer. Reading email and performing similar tasks is
nothing new to the computer world (thunderbird, outlook, evolution have worked
well and fast for years).

It seems that somehow, throwing more developper at a given problem (such as
email interfaces) seems to only make products slower.

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Ws32ok
Maybe forcing google devs / management to use 4gb ram machines would incentise
them?

Requiring 16gb or more for email is excessive.

~~~
antoineMoPa
I Agree. Programmers in general should use worse machines sometimes.

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ankit219
PG wrote this[1] essay in March 2012, where he was saying the same thing. Paul
Buccheit reviewed the essay and had a suggestion to make. PG wrote "GMail is
painfully slow.", PB changed it to "GMail has become painfully slow."

[1]
[http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html](http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html)

Your comment reminded me of the essay hence posting it here.

Gmail app is still pretty fast. When they launched the new one, I was hoping
to find a function where you can run a fast version (just like html for slow
connections in old gmail, which was super quick even for slow connections) but
could not find it anywhere. You can switch back to old gmail, that is faster
(less slow) if you like, or if you like the smart compose, you can just kill
the apps GMail loads by default - Calendar, Hangouts, keep, Tasks, and much
more. Then it may become faster.

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yash1th
The new design is very slow and does not good look on firefox at least. I am
trying to use a mail client whenever I can for my primary email ID's. but if
you want to check an email quickly on the browser and you see that new design,
it's not very welcoming. I even tried switching between the design options
that they provide, and still not helpful at all

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awiesenhofer
The splash screen alone drove me back to using the HTML version - it's just so
much faster!

Direct link:

[https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/](https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/)

~~~
jesuslop
alternatively
[https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html](https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html)

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Shaddox
Google went trough a lot of effort to make their products slow on any browser
other than Chrome. So I guess it's their way or the high way.

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rbinv
Still slow on Chrome, though.

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duxup
I also see slow downs on Chrome.

That mail loading icon just halts at times, it seems random ish.

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dpc_pw
Same. It's ridiculous.

I remember when gmail was introduced (invite only) and it was blazingly fast
and so appealing. Years ago, on browsers that haven't had their JS optimized
even 1/10th as well as modern ones.

Wirth's law.

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js4ever
Gmail tab in chrome usually take between 500mb to 2gb or RAM on my computer...
That probably explain part of the issue...

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y4mi
> _I look back at classic gmail as being really responsive._

The classic Gmail is still available and you can still use it though...

I switched to fastmail, but I honestly miss Gmail's interface whenever I for
some reason log in again.

Nor can I really confirm that slow loading speed. I keep hearing about it on
hn, but it always finishes within 1 seconds on my end... And is even quicker
on refreshes or navigating

/edit: chrome network monitor said 5.6s. it was useable after ~1s though.
firefox takes ages, however

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bootlooped
I am using the new UI, and I haven't found it to be particularly slow. I like
it, primarily for the ability to snooze. I wouldn't switch back to the classic
version, although they took away that menu option for me a week or so ago so
it's not like I could anyway.

I too use Proton Mail, but I still have to use my Gmail and Google account for
various things I don't have control over.

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forkLding
I've developed a workaround for the slowness, I star an email and when I open
it, the email appears much faster as compared to when I open the email in the
gmail tab it belongs to.

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stevenhubertron
I too switched to Protonmail. Privacy reasons aside Gmail is always the
slowest to load and on sketchy connections often doesn't load at all. I see
this most on airline Wifi.

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emrah
I disabled "Hover actions" under general settings and the slowness is fixed
for me.

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was_boring
Yes! I did some profiling of it and it took nearly 2 minutes to finish
loading, and 30mb of data transfer! All for checking my email.

This is on a fairly decent MacBook pro with 150mb down, living near one of the
largest data centers in the world.

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Simulacra
I avoid going to the gmail website as much as possible. It's way faster to
just use POP/IMAP access or to use my phone.

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jeisc
they have become the victims of their own success

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iamgopal
Shortcuts works as expected and no slowing for me, who handles about 300 email
a day ( mostly tagging and standard reply )

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sys_64738
Gmail is slower than Yahoo mail now!

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zygotic12
They hired the guys that did the Reddit re-design I reckon (after they did
hotmail :).

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sbt
Also the design is too American/AOL looking.

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craftyguy
Then don't use gmail. Or use gmail with an imap client if you insist on
retaining that service. gmail is not the only web mail service.

> I've personally switched to protonmail

So what's the point of this post then?

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bdavisx
The point of the post is to see if others are having the same issue or not.

