Is it just me or for the last couple of major releases has the Windows IDE become very slow to start up?
macOS opens 2026r1.2 in 10 - 15 seconds, Windows takes 2 minutes (not loading a project). Same mbs plugins etc.
I think it might be related to the new WinUI splash screen or sometime around when they added that.
OS ?
(name and version #)
Windows 11, latest updates
Windows 11 - i9-12900KF with 64Gigs
150 seconds to start after reboot
macOS 26.4.2 - macbook Air M2
11 seconds (no reboot)
Both are using 50 “Managed” plugins (using Plugin Pro)
Not here, but no plugin at all (I renamed the plugin folder).
Creating a Folder in the Finder and typing immediately a name: the first characters are missing: that is slow here.
Launch speed is largely affected by how fast your main drive is and how fast the underlying OS frameworks are for opening and reading files. You should try the same experiment on Linux for a mind blowing experience.
To your knowledge, does the IDE enumerate fonts during startup?
I ran a test over the last couple of versions i used. The times are the load time with the plugins i used at the time, and then with the latest managed plugins to compare apples with apples.
2023r4.0 = 1:18 (old) + 1:54
2024r2.1 = 1:23 (old) + 1:34
2024r3.0 = 1:30 (old) + 1:34
2024r3.1 = 1:19 (old) + 2:00
2024r4.2 = 1:28 (old) + 2:04
2025r2.0 = 2:15 (old) + 2:59 - new UI
2025r3.0 = 2:45 (old) + 2:46
2026r1.0 = X:XX (old) + 2:50
2025r2 there was a big jump in load time, with the new WinUI GUI
We’ll see that could be. A new framework means more stuff that needs to load.
To be fair though… a new plugin set does come with a one-time load hit because the IDE has to recalculate hashes of all the plugins and to make a list of all of the item signatures to show in autocomplete.
The best benchmark would be after the second complete launch of the IDE.
Because of this, I activated the non-closing ide when the project closed. At least I wait only once for slow loading!
Windows Launch speed is extremely related to Windows Defender.
You need to add Ignores to Windows Defender on some folders. But if Xojo is expanding Plugins (both its own internal and 3rd parties) into temp folders then thats big problem also on the Windows Defender that will scan it all.
And then there is the rumor of course of Xojo adding delay in the Plugin loading in the latest versions so you can read when it loads……. I just sincerely hope that rumor is false………
Oh they definitely did this crap on the compiling window.
I asked William about this and he said If there’s a delay, it’s unintentional.
Could you guys put the temporary DLL files into a cache folder?
And keep them there for faster loading?
So defender would at least not check them the second time.
Also people cut pit this cache DLL folder on an exclude list for malware scanning.
Have you considered distributing your plugins as xojo_plugin folders instead of zip archives? That would improve load times and eliminate the need for us to extract the DLL into a temporary or cache directory.
I am using “Managed” plugins which are already unzipped.
I added the plugin folder to windows defender, but did not seem to have much effect. Is there somewhere else i need to add exceptions for?
Distributing plugins unpacked is not as nice.
Plugins Pro unzips them if someone needs that.
You need to add all the Xojo folders somewhere in program data.
But i think they extract plugins maybe to temp folder so even doing it in program data might not be enough.