Bootstrap Studio is sluggish (slow)

I’m seeing some really slow responsiveness to Bootstrap studio when trying to switch between different pages and right clicking on html elements. I’m able to reproduce this issue on a 2021 MacBook Air and my Ubuntu machine (Ryzen 3600 machine). I’ve attached the bsdesign file that I use and have a similar problem when working with other files that have images recently:

I’ve also attached a gif animation of the slowness that I’ve seen with CPU usage of my PC when performing these actions:

For the images used in this bsdesign file, they are only 50~60kb large so I’m not expecting these to have much impact on performance.

I downloaded it. Fast. I have no problem with it…

Thank you for sending a test bsdesign and the gif! I can’t reproduce the slow down, which is strange given that you’ve experienced it on two separate computers.

I have a few questions:

  • Does it occur immediately after a fresh restart of the application or does it need to have been running for a while?
  • How many custom components (in the User folder) do you have?
  • Can you try resetting the app to a fresh state by deleting the bstudio folder?

Hi Martin and DGDufi thanks so much for getting back to me about this. I don’t think I’ve installed many custom user components. In the end, I followed the procedure to reset the installation of bootstrap studio and that did the trick.

  • The problem seems to have happened even after a fresh restart and I found that it had a similar problem when I opened other bsdesign files too
  • For custom components, I don’t download many, I probably had about < 10 at the time

I noticed this slowness when I added some large images from unsplash, at first the images I added were rather large (3000x4000 px) but found comments that shrinking them down would help improve performance. Maybe there was something cached that might have impacted things, I’m not quite sure.

When you start BSS, look at the running processes in the task manager.

I used to have a problem running another program in the background.

Scan your computer’s status, update drivers and outdated applications.

Unfortunately, I was unable to reproduce the error you mentioned.

Use the application below to update your drivers and block unnecessary running processes with a single click.

For example: Driver Booster 9 Free: Official Free Driver Updater Tool for Windows 2021

I don’t have a better idea yet … :frowning:

Hey, I often notice a slowdown when I work long at BSS with a project.

Sometimes the slowdown occurs after 5-10 minutes, sometimes after an hour.

My work characteristics:

  • Bootstrap CSS compilation from SCSS files
  • I use linked components between layout pages
  • I turn online preview on and off many times

I don’t use custom components at all

It seems to come slowdown earlier if I open multiple .bsdesign projects at once.
Even if I leave one active and close the rest of them, BSS is still slow…

My config:

  • MacBook Pro 2015 13" (Core i5 2.7 GHZ, 8 GB RAM)
  • macOS Monterey 12.1
  • Bootstrap Studio 6.0.1

I can concur that on my Mac I also have issues with slowing and even times when the page goes gray and actually saves it that way. Thankfully I have the backups turned on so I can restore it fairly easy enough, but definitely shouldn’t have to. I’ve learned that Ctrl/Cmd+S is my best friend these days lol.

I’ve had other issues with shutting down projects (still have that issue) where sometimes it will shut it down, but takes about a minute or 2, and sometimes I just have to close the app itself).

I too have issues happen sooner and more laggy when I have more than 1 project open at a time. I don’t do that too often so it’s not all that bad for me, but I would do it more often if it weren’t an issue with slowness.

What I will say is this is mostly with a single project that I’ve been working on for a little while to upgrade (basically redid it from scratch) from BS 2.3 to BS 5 and it’s a lot of pages (well to me it’s a lot at around 35) which I think might contribute to it. I also do have the jQuery turned on in case that matters due to a script that needs it until such a time that I find a replacement.

My config:

  • Mac Mini M1, 2020 (8 Core, 16gb Ram)
  • Chip Apple M1

Hopefully we’ll get some love on this at some point. :slight_smile:

I too have issues with the program randomly going into a super slow mode on my Windows 7x64 machine, where it takes upwards of ten seconds to select something, and then another ten second for it to deselect before you can select something else. I have spent hours trying numerous things to figure out what triggers this. So far, no luck. I not sure when when it first started, but I’m thinking it was around one of the later 5.x releases (5.8 or 5.9)

The only clues I’ve been able to find so far are the following:

When the program goes into the “slowdown” state, the longer I keep BSS open, the slower my whole system becomes. This made me think memory leak. I opened the Windows Task Manager and saw that there were four instances of Boostrap Studio.exe running under Processes. I quit the program, and a single instance of Bootstrap Studio.exe continued to remain running. I assume this is related to the problem.

So I force stopped this hanging instance, which worked and restarted the program, but the sluggish operation was still there exactly the same as before. For some reason, whatever process is “stuck” remains stuck even when all instances of bootstrap studio.exe are killed.

Rebooting the computer was the only way I could get the program back to its normal, speedy state. Then one day on a whim, I tried logging off Windows instead of rebooting. Viola. When I logged off and then opened BSS, the slowdown was gone.

As far as I know, when you log off Windows, all processes that are initiated by the user end as though you had force quit them with the task manager. Windows system processes and services continue running.

So whatever is causing BSS to slowdown is something that keeps running despite force-quitting all instances of bootstrap studio.exe, but logging off kills whatever it is and fixes the slowdown.

I’m having a lot of issues with slowing now too. Seems if I open a 2nd project or more is when it starts to slow down. I’ll test a little further to see if it’s just a BS5 issue later when I get home unless someone does it ahead of me hint hint LOL :stuck_out_tongue:

Do you notice the slowdowns occurring when a specific feature is used, like SASS editing or external editors?

I can confirm that:

  1. I get no slowdown if I am just working on a new site and have external editors (VS Code) working with Sass.

  2. When I open a clean just starting to create BS5 project and then opening a BS4 project there is no slowness that I can see, just a touch from changing from project to project and that’s about it, all is good.

  3. When I open a clean just starting to create BS5 project and then opening a BS3 project (which is the one I’m remaking right now as I gave up trying to upgrade it and am doing it from scratch now) it is very bad laggy slowness and gets sticky like stuck in places where you have to wait for it to catch up or something…

  4. Opening any more than 2 projects, no matter what BS version, causes a lot of slowness.

  5. Even after shutting down the app, then opening just one project after having had the 2 projects with BS3 and BS5 open, the lagginess is still there. Had to reboot the computer to get rid of it.

  6. Opening just one project at a time, no matter which version of BS, all is fine.

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I’m in the same boat. Newest build (6.0.2) installed yesterday and now everything is slow or simply locks up, even when I’m not doing anything. My coding and setup are exactly the same as just the day before and it was fine, it is this build that is glitching. I tried to roll back to a previous build only to have it say my latest project was made on a new build and can’t be opened and there is no way to save down for backward compatibility (something I can do in Adobe apps)

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Idk if its the case, but im having some problems with newest bss version too, but im having problems like sometimes the preview in the browser wont refresh the current state of the app and i have to disable and enable the preview to get the current state of the web app im building in bss, i havent had any issues like that before, im also sometimes having problem with vsc and saving code in x.js file and it wont save it etc, it could be something on my side, but i havent had any issues like this in prev version no matter what js libs etc i would use it was fine and the preview was working well, now it feels like idk and feels slower overall, i guess something did happen after update or sum lol, my bss feels hella slow since i got 6.0.2 even doing stuff like moving elements inside bss feels slower and less responsive than before it was and even if theres like not alot of elements, 1 page, 1 scss file without styles, 1 js file without any boilerplate code and its so slow, idk what did happen ._.

I’m on windows 10 tho ;p

I’ve had this issue for quite a few builds actually. I’m pretty sure I reported it months ago, but I do still have this issue as well. It’s not every time, just very sporadic so I haven’t been able to track down anything that seems to be tied to it.

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THIS ^^^ is the frustrating thing. Sometimes I can use the program for 4-5 hours and not have any issues… open multiple sites, copy stuff between sites, edit images in external editors, etc… with no problems, and then every once in a while I’ll be doing the same exact sort of stuff and the program will just slowdown, like someone flipped a switch.

And I can’t figure out what triggers it. All I know is I have not been able to force it to happen by trying different things. And the only thing that fixes it is to log out of my Windows session, or reboot the machine.

And I’m not doing anything complicated. I’m not using scss. I’m not using any js files. Just ordinary CSS files and a variety images… PNG, JPG and SVG.

I’ve only been using the program for short instances over the past few days, and so far it hasn’t slowed down. I’ll be doing a marathon session over the weekend building a new site, and I’m going to try and pay careful attention to my work process in the event it slows down so hopefully I can figure out the cause.

@jo-r @printninja Ye, I have no idea guys… It’s so weird, it wasn’t like this before, and I have no idea why does it happens. Maybe Martin will find out what could it be(possibly).

Used the program for a solid two hours this afternoon and no slowdowns.

No slow down playing with your Tim-Test.bsdesign file on my side. In general (so, not with your file specifically), the slowest stages I noticed in BSS are when saving and exporting ; sometime it’s fast and sometimes less (I mean working on the same project).

Another possible clue @martin … today I opened Bootstrap Studio and opened a simple 5 page site. I also opened Windows Task Manager and noted that there were four instances of Bootstrap Studio.exe running.

I selected an image in order to enter some alt text. I clicked on the Options tab, and It took about 6-8 second for the program to change the from the Appearance tab to the Options tab.

During this “slowdown”, I noted that one of the four instances of Bootstrap Studio.exe (highlighted in yellow) pretty much doubled the amount of memory it was using.

I then closed the program, and the highlighted instance of Bootstrap Studio.exe that had used the excessive memory was still running. I had to force quit it with Task Manager.

I then reopened Bootstrap Studio and found it was still stuck in what I’m calling the “slowdown mode.” Trying to do anything involving the program’s interface would result in a 6-8 second lag, and a doubling of memory usage on the one instance of Bootstrap Studio.exe

I then logged off Windows and reopened Bootstrap Studio and Windows Task Manager. The slowdown was gone, and when I’d interact with the program interface, the instance of Bootstrap Studio.exe that was doubling its memory usage before was no longer doing this. It would now just use slightly more memory, and the program operated as normal.

Whatever is happening, it appears to be related one instances of Bootstrap Studio.exe that doesn’t seem to release the memory it’s using when it goes into this “slowdown mode.”

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@martin Update: While using BSS tonight, it went into slowdown mode and it seemed to happen at some point after I opened Photoshop CS5 and started editing some images. (Photoshop is set, along with Illustrator CS5, as my external editors for images in BSS.)

I opened Windows Task Manager and noted that there were FIVE instances of Bootstrap Studio.exe running. When I quit the program, all 5 instances ended. I then restarted Bootstrap Studio and it was still running slow, and again I saw 5 instances of Bootstrap Studio.exe running.

I then logged off Windows, Logged back in, reopened Bootstrap Studio and it was running normally. I checked Windows Task manager and again there were 5 instances of BSS running. I closed the program, and FOUR of the instances ended, but one DID NOT. I had to force quit it.

I believe something in BSS is “hanging around and running”, chewing up memory, and that’s what’s causing the slowdowns (at least in my case.)

NOTE: As an experiment, I have removed Photoshop as an external image editor. I am going to try using the program for a few days like this, and see if it experiences the slowdown.