Unusably slow (sometimes)

[worn rover]

I am frustrated with how Files can be so I ran some tests.

The specifics

I started a fresh instance of Files and Files preview before the tests.
I used the "Details" layout for all of the tests.

I tested Files, Files Preview and Explorer as well as 7Zip for extraction.

In the tests I used a folder with 384 duplicate PNG files, each 1.3MB in size.
The folder itself has a size of 500MB.
I wanted to measure the performance of deleting the folder itself and as all of its contents with the different options and note down how well the app itself was functioning while doing these tests.

I also tested extracting a ZIP file containing 10 duplicate TXT files with each 913MB totalling to 8.92GB. The ZIP was uncompressed.
For this test I also measured 7Zip's performance.

Test results

Files

• Deleting the folder

  • 3.7s
  • UI normal

• Deleting folder contents

  • Stopped at 5m
  • 21% done
  • The app was slowly working on the process
  • UI completely frozen

• ZIP extraction

  • 1.40m
  • Progress bar was not updating
  • UI normal

Files preview

• Deleting the folder

  • 0.9s
  • UI normal

• Deleting folder contents

  • 1.26m
  • UI choppy but working

• ZIP extraction

  • 1.33m
  • Progress bar was not updating
  • UI normal

Windows Explorer

• Deleting the folder

  • 0.8s
  • UI normal

• Deleting folder contents

  • 1.8s
  • UI normal

• ZIP extraction

  • 1.34m
  • UI normal

7Zip

• ZIP extraction
  • 27s
  • UI normal.

System details

• Files 3.7.7.0
• Files preview 3.7.9.0
• Windows 11 pro (10.0.22631.3737)
• AMD Ryzen 5 5600
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
• 32GB RAM
• 1TB Seagate Firecuda SSD

To summarize: The deletion speed of files is terribly slow when you are deleting individual files. Also file actions should be handeled on a seperate process so as to not slow down the ui updates with slow background processes

[dawn glacier]

UI freezing is known to happen if there are many items in the recycle bin https://github.com/files-community/Files/issues/14108

When deleting the folder contents did you have it open still while it was happening?

[worn rover]

I'll have to test this later with an empty recycle bin. And yes I had the folders open in the app that was doing the deleting with the details layout.

I've also read through the issue and I do have recycle bin pinned to the sidebar. I will change that.

[worn rover]

so i've tried those suggestions and both unpining the recycle bin and emptying it made a big difference. the problem still persists though and the files themselves fill up the bin until it slows down to ~6 items per second at 1.3MB each at a total of around 8MB/s which is still extremely slow. also the UI is unusable during the whole process. still this is an improvement.

permanently deleting the files takes ~4 seconds with a speed of around 170MB/s

[dawn glacier]

Unusable how?