Signal desktop too slow when it starts

[cirochiaiese]

• I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates

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Bug Description

When Signal desktop starts it requires too time to load all messages. I think is incredible that user must wait that long time everytime starts Signal, but I don't find anything in setup to avoid it.

Platform Info

Signal Version: 1.25.3

Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64 bit

Linked Device Version:

Link to Debug Log

[Coruna]

Same for me! It takes so long that it's practically not usable

Signal Version: 1.25.3
Operating System: Ubuntu

[Tursko]

Completely agree. It takes a while once you've racked up a bunch of messages. There has to be some solution to this.

Signal Version: 1.25.3
Operating System: Win 10

[kenpowers-signal]

This has been observed on other operating systems as well. The fix is likely the same for all platforms. #3171 #3172

[kumosumo]

I think a workaround would be to load a fixed number of messages (say 50) for every conversation to begin with and let the user use the application and in the background, load the rest. That way you can mitigate the initial wait time and load conversation histories in the background

Signal Version: 1.25.3
Operating System: Win 10

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@kumosumo I'll refer you to prior discussion on this idea here: #1442 (comment)

[rainerzufall]

debug log after approximately an hour start up - it got stuck on loading 350 messages: https://debuglogs.org/55186b82aac5856ae32c9616009fc58d75e7cd43490c623dd34edb5c2614b593

I closed the app and started it again: log after another half an hour, when the start up suceeded: https://debuglogs.org/cc02177dc7c5f7c9c59a768057b23f021dba7a0c45df029760984f792ea9d64b

Additional information:
It was the first start up after my holiday (not online between 28th July and 11th August). But no "Error handling incoming message" ocurred. It also seems that no messages are missing.

PC Specs: Lenovo W530; i7-3610QM, 4x CPU @2.30GHz; 8GB Ram; Windows 10 (1903); HDD: TOSHIBA MK5061GSY

Signal/1.25.3

EDIT:
Log after ~45min of start up of SignalBeta/1.26.0-beta.3 which is installed alongside the production build. So exactly the same messages had to be processed: https://debuglogs.org/174310a01460cbbc5f90133a2880be2cb87133fd6e40cec2e53afdd2a596e3a9

EDIT2:
Log from my Work PC, after ~5minutes of start up with Signal/1.25.3. Again same amount of messages had to be processed: https://debuglogs.org/6e83f0144ecf52bb48308ad3c486e7fb76936d4767df8af10a3ad343ff317e95

PC Specs: Lenovo T460; i5-6300U, 2x CPU @2.40GHz; 16GB Ram; Windows 7 Enterprese (SP1); SSD: Samsung MZ7TY256HDHP-000

EDIT3: deleted the sentence about no missing messages, apparently I have been over the threshold, because old messages are missing. but it lead to no errors!

[denver-s]

I have not used Signal on my PC for 3 days and I have not received many messages, but still it is loading 700 messages! How is that possible??

[spychodelics]

i have not one single message on my phone anymore, but the desktop app (freshly installed) downloads about 500 messages, what happens there?

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@spychodelics If you're on Linux or macOS, uninstall/reinstall of Signal Desktop does not remove data from your user directory. So your prior installation is still there if you didn't unlink it in your mobile app.

[brokep]

i have not one single message on my phone anymore, but the desktop app (freshly installed) downloads about 500 messages, what happens there?

My experience has been that usually means your local index is corrupt or pulling down some large files that have been shared. Your best bet is to clear local messages, re-link desktop app.

[spychodelics]

@scottnonnenberg-signal
@klosnet

you were both right, there seemed to be data i forgot about. after deleting the data in the desktop app and re-link it. every think were ok. sorry for "disrupting" this thread.

[pedzed]

In the mean time, it would be nice to change the message to something more logical. What is meant with 'messages'?

[Hritik14]

Same here. Running Arch Linux 5.4.3. I did not open signal for about 2 days on laptop and now it takes around 6 seconds for every 10 message to load while starting.
IMHO, it is not even required for the desktop app to fetch all the messages, I would rather want past few messages with the ability to send new ones and fetch on scroll than the eternal splash message.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@Hritik14 Please consider providing your debug log (View -> Debug Log) so we can see what's taking a long time for you.

[Hritik14]

Hi. @scottnonnenberg-signal
I opened it again, this time it was faster (a lot) and that makes sense because I also opened it yesterday but the rate at which it was "Loading messages X so far" was the same, so I think the debug logs would still be helpful. Here they are: https://debuglogs.org/34b6afbb34adebc8f4f479dd8bb66303c25d5b13615ea0c91d5be09e8f8fc0ff

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@Hritik14 there are some unexpectedly long delays in database requests on your machine. Perhaps you could talk about your hardware, linux distro and window manager, hard drive specs?

INFO  2019-12-20T09:45:07.747Z SQL channel job 51 (createOrUpdateItem) succeeded in 2517ms
...
INFO  2019-12-20T09:45:08.694Z SQL channel job 52 (createOrUpdateItem) succeeded in 2422ms
INFO  2019-12-20T09:45:08.796Z SQL channel job 53 (saveUnprocesseds) succeeded in 2310ms

[janvlug]

@Hritik14 Trimming my SSD on Fedora increased the speed of starting Signal tremendously:
See for more info: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/EnableFSTrimTimer
I use this command (as root):
# fstrim --fstab --verbose

[Hritik14]

It's a pretty decent hardware. My filesystem is XFS on HDD, distro is Archlinux and window manager is i3-gaps.

…

On Fri, 20 Dec, 2019, 10:47 PM Scott Nonnenberg, ***@***.***> wrote: @Hritik14 <https://github.com/Hritik14> there are some unexpectedly long delays in database requests on your machine. Perhaps you could talk about your hardware, linux distro and window manager, hard drive specs? INFO 2019-12-20T09:45:07.747Z SQL channel job 51 (createOrUpdateItem) succeeded in 2517ms ... INFO 2019-12-20T09:45:08.694Z SQL channel job 52 (createOrUpdateItem) succeeded in 2422ms INFO 2019-12-20T09:45:08.796Z SQL channel job 53 (saveUnprocesseds) succeeded in 2310ms — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#3477?email_source=notifications&email_token=ABY4SKOPGTRBUPX7KKD4WDLQZT4ZJA5CNFSM4IG6TZLKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEHNROKA#issuecomment-568006440>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABY4SKLWOL4N6X752JUKCQLQZT4ZJANCNFSM4IG6TZLA> .

[timluther]

Text messages aren't known for being heavy-weight in terms of size. What on earth is signal doing to make the loading of a few megabytes take 20 minutes? Are you loading them all 100 times or something? Also, do we need to load all of these messages all at once, what about loading the most recent first then lazily loading others as needed?

[kenpowers-signal]

@timluther Signal uses a stateful protocol, so we have to download all messages (in order) so that we can maintain the protocol state between your desktop device and all of the other devices you have sessions with.

What are the specs of your machine? Can you provide us with a debug log?

[timluther]

The machine is i7-3930k @ 3.20 ghz, 16bg ram running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on one partition, Windows 10 on another. Windows 10 signal boots up fine but on Ubuntu it's 'go-and-make-lunch' slow. Where would I find the debug logs on Ubuntu please?

…

On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 5:06 PM Ken Powers ***@***.***> wrote: @timluther <https://github.com/timluther> Signal uses a stateful protocol, so we have to download all messages (in order) so that we can maintain the protocol state between your desktop device and all of the other devices you have sessions with. What are the specs of your machine? Can you provide us with a debug log? — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#3477 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABBU56LFT7OOYPMNHK6S6PLRVEJY3ANCNFSM4IG6TZLA> .

[kenpowers-signal]

@timluther You can find debug logs by going to View > Debug Log inside of Signal.

[Hritik14]

@kenpowers-signal the thing about fetching everything at once really didn't make sense to me.
Wouldn't it be better if you it would fetch, say 10 messages from top 10 chats for startup and then proceeds to fetch the rest while we're able to actually use the app?

[Hritik14]

Also, the windows label appears mistakenly placed as I previously reported the same issue on my Archlinux install.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@Hritik14 There are a number of reasons we need to process all messages, and process them in order. One is the stateful encryption protocol underlying everything, another is the fact that we don't trust the times sending devices bake into their messages. You can feel free to read up more here: https://signal.org/docs/

[Hritik14]

I see. Though wouldn't it be better to keep a cache of previous messages than fetching them all everytime signal starts ? Or maybe cache only the required data to decrypt the latest messages?

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@Hritik14 We only download new messages. We cannot re-download messages from the server, because they are deleted from the server when we download them.

I encourage you to go do some research on the signal protocol, how signal generally works, maybe go to the forums to talk with others about this. We certainly welcome a pull request once you get familiar enough with everything!

[Scott-Barnett]

I have also experienced slow loading of messages for a number of months, especially on Linux. Typically it will take a number of minutes to load ~1000 messages, although today it took ~30 seconds to load the 30 messages received since I last time I had the application open (earlier in the day).

Logs obtained are below:
https://debuglogs.org/ac9a4318707a3fcfe3ab908cb3922bf2e00d154f7bf7abd5b92ec1f2a4eb8bab

Specs for this PC: i5 6600k, 16GB RAM, SATA SSD for the OS, 7200rpm SATA HDD for the home folder running Fedora F33 (Signal 1.39.5 built from this repo)

[janvlug]

@SamuelBailey, @Scott-Barnett: Did you try to trim your disk?
For details see this comment.

[Scott-Barnett]

@janvlug I have just tried that now and it still took about 30 seconds to open Signal having only received about 10 messages since the last time I opened it.

My Signal build folder is stored on my HDD (inside my home folder) so I don't believe my SSD is being used by it.

[SamuelBailey]

I haven't trimmed my disk, but also I haven't really been able to test the opening time since my first post in this thread, since I don't think I've received enough messages on signal in-between sessions to check whether or not there is any difference in the rate of processing.

[feynon]

I'm having the same issues as mentioned above. Windows machine just loads it fine in 30 seconds or so but it takes forever on my Ubuntu machine, like 20-30 minutes forever. Wondering if devs are addressing this issue.

[msevimli]

Is there any update ? on my ubuntu machine it takes 20 minutes to start up

[feynon]

@msevimli The desktop engineer said that they are aware of it and the optimized build is in the works.

[ghost]

I believe it's a long pending issue and they gotta fix this in a timely manner. The way I see it, Signal, although more secure, lacks the pizazz and oomph of Telegram. It is difficult for me personally to sell it friends and family.

[tatusamma]

It's been 2 hours now. Just wanted to send a quick message on a PC.

Windows Server 2019, Signal desktop 1.40.0

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@tatusamma (and everyone in this thread) When you run into problematic performance, please provide your debug log. View -> Debug Log. That will give us the tools necessary to improve things.

[jasonpolites]

Same issue here (Windows 10, Signal Desktop v1.40.1)

https://debuglogs.org/b204f7f06371452bd50ee9b806608d170657be0812da7e9e9a56fe2226898f24

[Scott-Barnett]

I used to experience this issue when I had a spinning HDD for my home directory and an SSD for the rest of the system. I have since switched to using an SSD for the whole system and noticed that this issue has got significantly better.

This would suggest to me that the issue is related to the I/O speeds on the home folder.

To be clear, I'm not advocating going out and buying an SSD, I just thought this would be useful in helping to pinpoint where the issue lies.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@jasonpolites Thanks for that debug log. However, it's important to provide some context about the debug log to help us understand what to do with it. When you say 'same issue' what exactly do you mean?

[NOTaMIME-jk]

@spychodelics If you're on Linux or macOS, uninstall/reinstall of Signal Desktop does not remove data from your user directory. So your prior installation is still there if you didn't unlink it in your mobile app.

Have you tied

sudo apt-get purge signal-desktop
instead of
sudo apt-get remove signal-desktop
I don't know if it will work, I'm just curious.

[NOTaMIME-jk]

I have the same problem on both Ubuntu and Manjaro with he signal-desktop app. Its very perplexing for the phone app to open instantaneously but for the desktop version to be SO slow.

[tatusamma]

Its very perplexing for the phone app to open instantaneously but for the desktop version to be SO slow.

That's probably because your signal runs on your phone all the time, syncing a bit here and a bit there. Good test for this would be shutting down your phone or denying internet access for signal for a few days and chatting a few days on a desktop and then testing how quickly the phone app opens.

[jasonpolites]

@scottnonnenberg-signal

Thanks for that debug log. However, it's important to provide some context about the debug log to help us understand what to do with it. When you say 'same issue' what exactly do you mean?

Hey.. so after reading through the various comments and replies, it may be that my experience is working as intended but to answer your question I observer a longer-than-expected startup time as the app "loads messages". It reports around 700 messages (which by comparison to others seems lower), and takes around 20-30 seconds to complete (rough approximation).

The answer may be "that's just how signal works", but I think it's unexpected for a lot of users who are familiar with other messaging apps which take far less time to reach a usable state.

Purely from a usability standpoint, asynchronously loading these messages may be useful (i.e. allow the app to reach a usable state more quickly, prioritizing new messages and contacts with new messages ahead of older messages), but I don't know what technical barriers exists which may prevent this from being plausible.

[mmahmoudian]

According to the log from when the "app [is] ready" to when the messages are loaded took over 16 minutes (16.817 minutes to be exact):

INFO  2021-03-17T11:48:49.647Z app ready
...
INFO  2021-03-18T17:04:02.781Z Upgrade message schema (with index): {"done":false,"numProcessed":1,"fetchDuration":638,"upgradeDuration":1,"saveDuration":370,"totalDuration":1009}

@scottnonnenberg-signal Out of curiosity, is there any perspective that this gets resolved in a foreseeable future?

---

I would like to tag similar posts here as well:
#5030, #3172

[mmahmoudian]

@scottnonnenberg-signal Any updates on investigation of this issue (#3477) and the #5030 and #3172 ? Do you still need more log files?

I'm dealing with this in daily basis and it is annoying. The newest log file is here which shows that it took about 16 minutes to load when the last sync time was only 3 days before:

Line 19400: INFO  2021-03-19T11:06:59.974Z close event {"readyForShutdown":true,"shouldQuit":true}
Line 19401: INFO  2021-03-22T08:58:09.805Z app ready
Line 35679: INFO  2021-03-22T09:14:38.641Z Upgrade message schema (with index): {"done":false,"numProcessed":1,"fetchDuration":2,"upgradeDuration":1,"saveDuration":545,"totalDuration":548}

[jasonpolites]

So.. there's no science here, but I just updated to v5.0.0 of the desktop app on Windows, and I don't see any message loading anymore. I do see a loading screen, which takes less than a second.

So either:

• The problem was fixed (yay!)
• I have a separate bug which is causing messages to not load correctly (I don't notice any other unexpected behavior)
• Message loading doesn't happen every time? (I haven't seen it once, but it's only been a few hours. I restarted the app half a dozen times before I got bored)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[my-jekyll-site]

Throwing another log on the fire: the desktop app is completely unusable for me because of the long startup time. As I type this, Signal has been loading messages for over 30 minutes with no end in sight.

Link to logs

Operating System: Windows 10 Home
Processors: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8350U CPU @ 1.70GHz 1.90 GHz
Memory: 20 GiB of RAM
I have an SSD

[mmahmoudian]

As of signal-desktop version v5.0.0 i no longer have this issue on Linux.

[MitchelPaulin]

As of v5.0.0 this is also fixed for me on Windows 10

[josh-signal]

We have even more performance improvements coming to you soon but glad that ya'll aren't experiencing this any more with 5.0.0

[mmahmoudian]

@josh-signal Some transparency and keeping us in the loop would have been better that this radio silence. We should have found from the release notes rather than testing every new version and hoping that the issue has been addressed.

From where I stand, many things are happening behind closed doors in Signal codebase and that is something that makes me uncomfortable with calling Signal an OpenSource project.

P.s: you might want to close #5030 and #3172

[ec52569n]

Hi friends. Running v 5.22.0 on Linux Ubuntu, took ~20 minutes for Signal to load over 30k messages which I know I don't have. This issue is still persisting.

[hiqua]

@ec52569n debug log?

[psadi]

Hello, I'm facing the same issue on MacOS

Took around 5 minutes to start

Edit: Attaching Debug log, It was relatively quicker but the number was messages was <60.

debuglog.txt

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

All: When you provide an update on how long things take for you, please provide a debug log. Then we can figure out what is taking all that time for you. Thanks!