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Ask HN: Do you use Google Inbox? Do you find it incredibly slow on desktop?

9 points by patrickdavey ↗ HN
I'm wondering if it's just me, but Google Inbox (which I like) seems incredibly slow on the Desktop. It's find on Android. Looking in developer tools it's loading 11megs of JavaScript and making 100+ requests on page load. See screenshot [0]

I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced this, and whether there are sneaky hacks around it. I've signed out of hangouts but that hasn't made any difference.

[0] http://imgur.com/a/hFSx1

13 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 41.7 ms ] thread
JasonSage
I used Inbox for a long time, but in the last 6 months or so it has gotten so incredibly slow. I started going to gmail any time I wanted to go straight to an email or compose something.

Inbox was Google's chance to offer something compelling to help me handle email. Inbox was the prime candidate to be a Progressive Web App—it could have been offline-first, use Service Workers and Web Workers effectively to manage requests and stay super-responsive... it was promising. Instead it is what it is now, abhorrently slow and network intensive, with merely fringe "benefits" over the old gmail interface.

I'm going to be switching to Fastmail very, very soon. There's just no reason for me to continue using Google for almost anything.

chrisked
I am using gmail and FastMail at the same time. Currently contemplating make a full switch to FastMail. It's a fast and reliable service with all the functionality I need. I encourage you to make to switch. Be prepared to spend a bit more time configuring it if you are used to gmail.
herbst
It takes a while to load. Especially on shitty internet, but otherwise i did not experience any slowness so far.

Actually due to preloading the opposite seems the case. But i have it always open as pinned tab.

Also i use chrome, maybe thats a issue with your browser? (If not chrome)

patrickdavey
Yup I'm using Firefox as my main browser, I'll see if it's any better on chrome when home. I imagine they optimize for their own, but it still makes a tonne of requests.
herbst
yeah most likely "optimized for chrome" :/

I guess it works for me because i never close it, its just there and pinned and chrome does a good job managing pinned passive tabs.

curiousgal
I'd been using it ever since it was announced, then it got so slow so I switched back to gmail.
Jemaclus
I'm not sure if it's slow, but it very frequently misses emails that are still in my "Important" folder on regular Gmail. As a result, I've switched back to regular gmail on desktop.

I still use the iOS Inbox app, though.

wwalser
Similar to others here I used it for a few months when it was initially released then eventually switched back when the load time got to me. I still use the native mobile client.

I'll also use m.gmail.com occasionally if I want to do something quickly and painlessly.

lambda_func
+1 it's getting slower over time, I made a switch to gmail too.
seanwilson
I wish they would just add the "hide email for later" feature to Gmail.
jdmarble
Using Chrome and it is very slow to load. Never timed it. Worse than the slow loading time, for me, is there is no indicatio when it is ready for business. If I try to interact with it without waiting about 10 seconds, it sometimes locks up and I have to reload the page. Very snappy afterwards, if I have some initial patience.