Neo4j Desktop - massive resource consumption and type of freezing on Windows

[Reiner]

My Neo4j Desktop (1.4.1) on Windows 10 is not properly usable. It gets really slow so key our mouse inputs takes 5-10 seconds to be executed. It consumes 2GB of memory and 30% of CPU although I'm not doing anything but have 6 result frames open with only one of them displays a graph with about 20 nodes and the others only 1 text line. Closing these frames will bring cpu consumption down but still waving between 0% and 30%, and still 2GB memory in use - for an empty browser window?

After closing this browser window and disconnect, still 350MB are used (without any active db)

All other applications on my system respond quickly - just Neo4 Desktop drives me quite crazy.

Best
Reiner

[linuslundahl]

Hey Reiner,

Thanks for reporting this.
I have done some optimising that will be in the next release that is expected to go out in two-three weeks. But what you are reporting sounds excessive...

Just a question, what does your environment look like? Do you have a lot of Projects and DBMSs / files in those projects? There was a bug that I fixed where that could make click events slow.

Another question is if you are running any form of Antivirus software, there have been reports of Windows users having issues with slow environments or event Desktop not starting correctly while having an Antivirus app running.

Cheers
Linus

[Reiner]

Hi Linus,

thanks for reaching out. I just have one project with 4 remote dbs and one local sandbox that is not running. Didn't used files yet. So quite tiny.

What is noticeable is that each result frame consumes resources. So the longer you work and the more results you keep open, it is getting slower. Results with graph display consumes even more than just table or text results as they seems to be kind of animated all the time. When it gets really slow, it often helps to close some or all result frames, but even closing them takes a while as application is responding very slow then.

I am using standard Windows built-in antivirus. If there are settings or exceptions to optimize this, please let me know.

Best
Reiner

[linuslundahl]

Hi Reiner,

Just so that I understand correctly, it's when the Browser result frames are shown that Desktop becomes unresponsive. If you close Browser it's working as expected?

Since it's an Electron app it will still use a bit of memory even when it's idling.

Cheers
Linus

[Reiner]

Hi Linus,

when I speak of Neo4jDesktop I always mean the browser because that’s the part of it I’m always working with. The main window I use just for switching databases, I did never try if this is slow. But browser window becomes slow over time using it and the more result frames are open.

Best,

Reiner

[clem]

I suspect that maybe this is not just Windows.

I experience a slow down over time using the Browser on the Mac.

The other thing I notice is that I lose the ability to select and copy text in the output cells at some point.

The problems go away when I quit and restart.

Maybe a memory leak?

[Reiner]

I can confirm that I also occasionally lose the ability to select and copy text in the output cells.

Off topic: Speaking of copying: in nodes with many properties it is really difficult to just select values. Most of the time the line slips away or the property name that follows is marked also. We usually have to copy guids there, I would love if I could mark them by just double clicking.

[linuslundahl]

Thanks, I will ping the Browser developers about this.
I know that they have been working on improving the performance for the visualisation though.

Cheers
Linus

[Reiner]

Thanks. Not only for performance but generally it would be nice to have a button to stop animation or auto-arrangement of graph display. This also would stop consuming cpu. Other idea would be to auto-animate only the last result frame and stop animation in all older frames as soon as a new result is created.