2018r3 was slow for me but 2018r4 has become unusable. I have a big app - lots of tabs and nested controls - but I’m running on a 6-core (12 virtual), 64GB, 1TB SSD MacPro… PLEASE have r5 focus on IDE performance.
Are you using Mojave in dark mode? This is something that is not mentioned in a lot of posts about the slowness.
Turns out this is really relevant as we’ve found, as have many others, that dark mode draws a lot slower and certain controls draw immensely slower (the group box is notably slow). And this is not peculiar to Xojo. The same slowness manifests itself in Xcode. There are several reports filed with Apple about this in Radar, Apples bug reporting system.
@Jason Parsley Nope - light mode.
Our Xojo development team experience these slowdown multiple times a day (especially typing speed) on 2018r3 and 2018r4, windows 10, on our main project (4000 classes with about 350,000 lines of code). The issue occurs normally when -
1.) run debugger
2.) pause on a line
3.) click edit code and start editing code
4.) click resume
5.) repeat steps 2-4
IDE slows down (tab swapping, typing speed, selecting methods/classes) until IDE is restarted.
we have never experienced these typing slow downs pre 64-bit IDE.
Thanks
[quote=416982:@Perry Fjellman]1. As I add more and more things progressively to a blank project, performance progressively gets slower. There wasn’t “one thing” that impacted overall performance.
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The more tabs and especially windows open, the more performance slows to a crawl. Typing is almost impossible when you have two windows open. When things are kept tabbed in one window, typing only seems to slow down when you’re in larger methods, with progressively worse performance the larger the method.
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This one is HUGE: controls are responsive and can be clicked and dragged in a layout editor easily, until you have NESTED controls. I had a window with 40+ controls and it remained responsive. As soon as I added a small GroupBox and put a button inside the group box, the entire IDE slowed to a crawl, including switching between the code editor, typing in the code editor, and clicking/dragging/manipulating controls in the layout editor.[/quote]
I am on windows and have these same issues. I have a single window interface with a PagePanel and numerous controls. I had to revert back to 2016R3 to get acceptable performance. Now, I will admit I have not tried a new IDE since 2017R3 because the performance on that was not acceptable. I’ve been meaning to download the latest IDE and give it a retry, hoping for performance improvements but not sure this has been addressed yet.
The issue is definitely the number of controls and whether they are nested.
It would be nice if you could describe the tasks in the IDE you’re seeing that are slow. And what your IDE has open at the time. Are you showing search results? Are you showing all breakpoints or bookmarks?
The more detail you can give us the more likely it is we can isolate some specific causes. “The IDE is slow” isn’t detailed enough to know what to even go looking for.
We do know that there are some specific things, like groupboxes in dark mode, that we are looking into. At this time it’s unclear what we can do as this specific issue also affects Xcode in dark mode.
Before making (eventually) the tests below, and if you can, install 2017r1 (for example) and run it, load your project: Is your IDE slow ?
You may continue with more old (if the IDE is slow), more recent (if the IDE is faster than 2018r4), until you find the first slow Xojo version.
What you can do (eventually) is to send your project to Xojo (confidentially), ask them how to do that.
If I had a slow speed working in the IDE here, I will do:
Quit every application,
Clears Xojo Cache,
Shutdown,
Boot (not reboot),
Reset the PRAM (cmd-alt-P-R) 5 times, then let the boot proceed,
Power Off.
Boot in the Recovery partition (cmd-r)
Run Disk Utils,
Repair both Macintosh HD / your partitions
Quit / Power Off
Boot.
Make sure the Internet is off (and no scanning software running *)
Run Xojo (and only Xojo: no other application),
[Do not load any project at this stage]
Is the IDE still slow ? Create a new project and add some controls in Window1, run, type text, quit, repeat some times
Is the IDE still slow ?
Load a two years old project and try to modify it: Is the IDE still slow ?
Close that old project.
Duplicate your project were Xojo IDE was slow, load it.
do some work (just to check if the IDE is still slow
).
The IDE is still slow ?
Loop Start
Delete a Control at a time / Add some code / Do whatever you do when your IDE is slow).
Is the IDE still slow ?
Loop Until no more Control
If the IDE is still slow, remove code in Window1, Event after Event / Method / Function / Whatever, etc.
Yes, this may takes time,but in the end, you will certainly find where the slow really is.
At last, I will check with a different computer / a computer owned by a friend / an Apple Reseller / Apple Store.
Is the IDE still slow ?
If so, I do not have any more idea; did you try to run in older macOS version(s) ?
I hope you do not already have done these tests and not found the culprit.
BTW: and if you think Ive done everything except : check ! It happens to me once, years ago, and was the thing to do ! 
Boot in safe mode ?
- “Scanning software running”: applications added after the computer box was opened
[quote=417885:@Jason Parsley]
It would be nice if you could describe the tasks in the IDE you’re seeing that are slow. And what your IDE has open at the time. Are you showing search results? Are you showing all breakpoints or bookmarks?[/quote]
Hey Jason,
I’m not sure if this is what others are seeing, but as shown in the video below, I experience an annoying lag when selecting and dragging controls. That is from a project created in 2018r4 that I created around Xmas day. No breakpoints, no tabs, no search results. And I opened the project right before making the video. Only plugins are the built in + MBS.
http://campsoftware.com/files/LongTerm/Xojo/IDEClickAndDragDelay.mp4
Disabling MBS does not change anything.
Looking at my experiences, it appears to be a memory leak related to debug runs. While the worst example that I’ve seen has been under Linux, I also see the issue under macOS High Sierra and Windows.
Check into <https://xojo.com/issue/54205> where the team have verified the issue.
[quote=420827:@Hal Gumbert]Hey Jason,
I’m not sure if this is what others are seeing, but as shown in the video below, I experience an annoying lag when selecting and dragging controls. That is from a project created in 2018r4 that I created around Xmas day. No breakpoints, no tabs, no search results. And I opened the project right before making the video. Only plugins are the built in + MBS.
http://campsoftware.com/files/LongTerm/Xojo/IDEClickAndDragDelay.mp4[/quote]
Thanks for posting that Hal. It’s being looked into as we write…
FYI, that video was with subclassed WebTextFields. However, I created a new project and added three normal WebTextFields and the same behavior occurred. I’m on a MacBook Pro and I the same behavior occurred on its built-in Retina display and my external non-Retina display. When I tested removing and reinstalling the MBS plugin, the delay was visible after a fresh launch of Xojo. Not sure what else to test…
Thanks for the additional info. We are working on this so you can hold off on testing if you want.