MEGA memory usage (over 8GB)

[JulianKingman]

I installed and opened Zazu and found that only the calculator plugin was doing anything. Also it was acting quite sluggish. Upon inspection, it seems that zazu helpers were using over 8gb of memory (I only have 8gb). I assume this is temporary on account of indexing or something like that, but that's a lot of memory! Here's a screenshot.

[bayleedev]

Yikes, that's a lot! I'm not seeing the same thing on my computer:

If you don't mind me asking, but can you try removing plugins one at a time to see if any of them are responsible for it? If I had to guess, my first instinct would be the file finder, as you suggested.

[JulianKingman]

Confirmed, it's the file finder.

Additional problems: quitting zazu doesn't quit the helpers, having the zazu dialog opens new 'high memory' zazu helpers (the original few zazu helpers don't exceed what you have shown).

[bayleedev]

https://github.com/tinytacoteam/zazu-file-finder/blob/master/directories.js#L29

So it's currently going through:

• /System/Library/PreferencePanes
• ~/Applications
• /Applications

1. Do you happen to have a large number of files/directories in these folders?

2. Also can you think of directories we could ignore that could help speed it up?

3. Also, how big is the file /.zazu/plugins/tinytacoteam/zazu-file-finder/data/applications.json?

[JulianKingman]

1. Not particularly. I have 150 apps or folders in the applications folder
2. It's pretty barebones as it is. Quicksilver currently indexes and searches 19 directories, some nested 3 levels deep, and does OK.
3. It doesn't exist...

[jlarmstrongiv]

I just installed Zazu, and it made my mac's fans run like crazy. Checking the console did reveal that Zazu was eating up quite a bit of cpu. Things to note: this was my first time running Zazu, and I do have 305 items in my applications folder (none of which were showing up in the search). Also, only 1 item in ~/Applications and nothing in /System/Library/PreferencePanes. Immediately after quiting the application, my mac calmed down.

[bayleedev]

This is an issue with the file finder, it should be sped up and possibly broken up.

[junebash]

Can confirm this; I had several instances of Zazu Helper open in the Activity Monitor, each using over a gig of memory, rendering my poor little Macbook Air basically unusable, haha.

[bayleedev]

@jonbash can you also answer the questions in this comment:

https://github.com/tinytacoteam/zazu/issues/95#issuecomment-270413867

[SpaceOctopus]

I also have this issue. Right now it's using 3gb. I can't use Zazu if it does this. Have you ever seen the launcher Wox? They use the Everything software for doing file search, and the resource usage is not so excessive. Wonder if the same could be accomplished here. Though....I have no idea if it's available on other platforms, so that could be a problem.... also, it may not be temporary due to indexing, unless indexing takes 4+ days? I mean sure, I have a ton of files (6+ TB), but there are ways to index files that don't cause this kind of problem

[bayleedev]

@SpaceOctopus yeah wox is a great suggestion.

The memory issue with the file finder has been fixed on Mac since it now uses the built in mdfind. It's also updated to allow other adapters.

[OscarBarrett]

I just noticed Zazu (not the helpers) was using 2.8GB of RAM. Restarting it dropped it to 36MB.

[chef-danny-d]

I'm running Zazu on ubuntu 16.04 LTS and I'm getting high numbers too but only when I leave the computer on overnight.