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Moving files via the web interface is glacially slow - how to fix?

Hi:

I'm trying to use the web interface to move pictures out of the "Camera uploads" folder and into a holding folder for later sorting. There are around 3k images that I would like to move, but the web interface returns an error along the lines of "that's too many files to move". That seems dumb (3k files isn't an unreasonably large number), but whatever.

The real problem occurred when I tried to move the files in batches. I selected around 800 and tried to move them - I waited at least 10 mins before I gave up. As far as I can tell, no files were moved. Why is this and is there any fix other than moving the files using file explorer and then letting the changes sync to the web?

Thanks,

-Jeremy

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Comments

Jay

Hi @Jeremy M.10, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Could you try switching browsers to see if this helps?

Otherwise, you can try using incognito/private browsing mode without any extensions running, clearing your cache and even resetting your browser entirely.

Let me know how it goes!

despairbear

I ran into the same issue, so I attached a profiler to the browser while it was chewing on 700 files and rummaged through the call stacks.

@Jaythe problem is you've got a quadratic operation in the web UI update after the files have moved. The move operation first sends an async request to the server; this takes about 2 minutes for 700 files. The costly part is updating the browser afterwards. The UI handles this by doing repeated list_dir calls; each time getting the status of every moved file in a series of list_file_members/batch calls with a limit of 5 each; and then it removes rows from the web interface one at a time. Each row triggers a callback on every other UI element, so it's about 1.5sec of local CPU time per batch, and one batch per five files.

Walter

Hey @despairbear - thanks for joining the discussion and flagging this with us.

Does this happen with only a specific web browser you're using?

Could you just let us know if you're noticing the same behavior after clearing your browser's cache or on another browser, preferably with no extensions or plugins running?

despairbear

Hello Walter -

This problem occurs in both Chrome and Edge. It even happens on a fresh install of Edge (nothing cached). It's not anything to do with the browser - the problem is due to how a specific piece of the Dropbox Web UI code is engineered. If one of your engineers looks at their profiler while performing a large file move, they'll see the problem and its cause straight away.

In the meantime I can work around this by avoiding the Web UI, but I figured the result of my investigation might be useful to you.

Walter

Thanks for the feedback on this @despairbear - I've passed it on to the team internally and you can let us know if you have anything else to add.

Cheers!