Why is Trello so painfully slow?
Asked by janlukasschroeder:

I have a Trello board with \~200 cards in 11 lists, and since approx. 2 weeks adding/updating a card is painfully slow. Also scrolling down/up in a list isn't smooth anymore.

I installed React Dev Tools in Chrome recently, and just wanted to check if that might be the root cause. Anyone else in the community experiencing this?

Cheers


Answers:
author: IceXuick
body: Since new Trello navigation Trello is again very slow - it's even so slow it's practically unusable right now. I've disabled 3 (lightweight) extensions on Chrome, but without any improvement. How can this be, because this would be a showstopper for me (been using Trello happily for over 9 years)!  

Define slow = Slow scrolling, slow typing, slow in interacting with practically everything.

comments: author: Sherri Wilson Johnson
body: Same!! Changing due dates is a nightmare!!


author: SimonW
body: Same. It's been terribly slow all day today. As Martin says, it seems since the navigation update this week there's a memory leak or some other resource intensive process that slows everything down.  

Atlassian/Trello, you're going to start losing users soon - there've been several outages this year (incredibly rare prior to this year) and businesses need to have these tools always available and running smoothly. Otherwise it's seriously inhibiting productivity.

I needed to look up a Trello card and add a comment with an update on the status of the task - so far it's taken me 20 mins to get the card open and @ mention a couple of people. I've then written "The issue" and haven't been able to write more than that as it's currently completely hanging.

Please tell me you are aware of this and you have work planned over the weekend to fix it?


author: SimonW
body: In case it helps anyone else, I tried Edge (I know, I was desperate!) and Firefox Developer Edition and the latter appears to be working absolutely fine, while running in Chrome continues to simply not work (and no, I don't have any extensions running that would make any sense to be causing any problem, and nothing has changed about my Chrome browser extensions or anything else in the last month - the issues appeared exactly at the point of the Trello upgrade this week).

So Firefox appears to be worth a try if you're having any similar issues.


author: Dragonite
body: I'm having the problem too, on Chrome. Firefox seems fine (there's some lag but it's usable) and I guess I can use that for now, but I'd like to be able to use it on Chrome again.


author: IceXuick
body: That only a very temporary solution, and Chrome is by far the #1 browser in use.  

I hope this gets sorted and the time of no hiccups and smooth working Trello can finally begin. Indeed this last year since Atlassian is in control it hasn't been as stable/usable as before.  

Even though some hiccups is something that you could expect in a transition period, with Trello this is the worst that can happen - people often use it all the time, and it should therefor also work all the time. I'm starting to look at other platforms already, because more than half of the time Trello is just broken/unusable for me.


author: Keith Mason
body: I'm having the same issue - use Trello daily and it's just become unusable for me since the new navigation switch.

I tried Opera of all browsers and it seems to work but my work accounts are all setup and run through Chrome - using a different browser for one tool isn't acceptable. I hope they get this sorted asap. This is massively unsustainable at the moment.


author: IceXuick
body: Is there any other place where to (actively) push this problem to Atlassian?  
Or is the team has seen it, i'd appreciate some confirmation here.


author: Keith Mason
body: There's a feedback form specific to the new navigation available here that I've submitted a response to. [https://trello.typeform.com/to/xtXa4sVq?team_status=UNKNOWN\&memberid=592d35574f1a5df55724a1ba](https://trello.typeform.com/to/xtXa4sVq?team_status=UNKNOWN&memberid=592d35574f1a5df55724a1ba)


author: IceXuick
body: I've filled in the form and set feedback there as well.  
Hopefully many others will do this as well.  

I've tried opening Trello again, and it seems even worse today.  
Just scrolling through a card takes about 2 seconds to respond to a scroll - including all other interaction within that card.   

Horizontal scroll through columns is also super jittery, though the cards are by far the slowest. This is currently really hurting business here, since i often just skip writing down stuff/notes/time-tracking because it's just way too slow.  

Trying in Incognito-mode without the new sidebar thing brings back the old speed.  

**YES!** I found a solution for (for now)  
There is a way to revert the new sidebar thing by doing this:  

https : //trello.com / {{my user name}} / labs   

(replace {{my.user.name}} with your own account name, you can see that in the URL when you navigate to your "profile/settings".  

Then remove the checkmark here (so it turns into a red cross):  

![trello-new-nav-is-bad-turn-it-off.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/162538i2FA202237E947F37/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "trello-new-nav-is-bad-turn-it-off.png")  

Reload Trello and i hope you have your speed back!  

(found the [answer here](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-questions/How-to-revert-Trello-visual-change-and-remove-the-left-quot/qaq-p/1807872))  


author: Greg McGuire
body: I've noticed this too. In my case it appeared to be caused by the Dashlane (password manager) extension. Disabling that fixed things. (You can also tell Dashlane to not autofill on a given web site like trello.com, that seems to work too.) I assume this is an issue with Dashlane and not Trello.


author: Dragonite
body: [@Greg McGuire](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4580298) Oh, that's a good observation. Specifically, telling the extension to only autofill logins and passwords fixes it; I wonder if Dashlane is erroneously identifying something on the new layout as an "address" field or something that it should fill out, and infinitely gets stuck trying to process whatever it is. I'll go and report this issue to them, also.


author: Andy Talbot
body: Yep, thanks for this, it was Dashlane for me too.


author: Sally
body: Same here. I turned Dashlane off from autofilling trello and speed is back.


author: Dragonite
body: Got a reply from Dashlane support; sounds like this was a known issue affecting Trello and a few other sites, and it should be fixed now. Looks good on my end so far!


author: Piero Biasi
body: Same here .. we have fast connection. But trello is almost unusable due to 10-20 sec of waiting time for opening comment or story ..  
Not only today, but since 4+ weeks

BTW: No dashlane installed here


author: IceXuick
body: I'm seeing more slowdowns again - even with old nav. I get errors with page/user not found, or it times out. Probably another update being rolled out, but with actual downtime. I'm not sure what Atlassian is doing, but it seems like it's very different from the original Trello experience, and this is not a compliment.  

Edit 2 hours later: I still can't access my Trello boards / cards. Can't read my todolist and also not log my hours.   

More info on: <https://trello.status.atlassian.com/>


author: Keith Mason
body: Dashlane sorted things for me too although I had similar issues yesterday - particularly frustrating during a presentation in which trello was involved. The last few weeks since this new navigation has turned up have seen a real step change for the worse in the trello experience.


author: Fanny
body: Our team has tried archiving as many cards from our existing Board to ease the lag. It seems to help in a small way. Better than nothing. But yes, it can be frustrating when the lag happens across multiple boards. Will start using it in another browser, but I would imagine Atlassian should acknowledge or address this for Chrome?  

Thanks!


author: lucasmarinb
body: Hi, i'm working for a company that actually has a huge board and in this moment there are various colleagues that can't even use the app (including myself) because it freezes til it crashes.

I've tested it in my laptop in Ubuntu 16.04 and in my Desktop with W10, in both Chrome and Firefox and the app is still unusable.


author: syamsoul
body: 10 april 2020,, i also exprienced very painful slow....  

please...urgent...i need to open trello to do some task...

how to open trello?


author: LordEgil
body: I have the same issue, I use the APP on mac, and sometimes in chrome.   
On window i also use it in Chrome.   

All three are painfully slow! i have been around for a long time, and really love trello before the changes to "workspaces". Before that the app worked like lightning and was awesome to use. Nowdays i dont want to open it at all and thinking if there is another app to use for this.   

I love everything about trello, but i cant use a tool that takes several seconds to just open.


author: Gerry Sol?
body: I turned off every extension in Chrome, and Trello began to flow like a breeze. I still don't know which extension/s is provoking the slowness (I have many and short of time). But I enter Chrome in Incognito mode and everything is perfect.

comments: author: Amy Livingston
body: I've turned off all the extensions except the Google ones I also need for work, and it hasn't helped. So maybe those are the culprits? If so, I guess there's nothing I can do about it except plead with the higher-ups to consider some other combination of software.


author: Thomas Murphy
body: Their current plan seems to be to kill their product with features.

A potential solution for Trello is to remove as many features as possible until boards can render.


author: Yatish Madhav
body: Unfortunately, I cannot vouch for any solution/answer at this stage but would like to know from Trello/Atlassian if there is any progress and action happening in terms of speeding up Trello?  

I admin a few boards as well. 1 board has about 500 cards while another has 233 ... but the one with 233 is slow and lagging and often crashing the Chrome tab at times.

Please advise?

comments: author: greg_studionone NA
body: Yep, I'll second this. In the last 6 months there seem to be some serious issue around performance. Reloading the window in frustration temporarily works and then it becomes unresponsive again.

Like other comments, I have disabled all extensions and run in incognito as a test. I'm on a 2017 top spec Macbook Pro so processing power is not the issue ....


author: Kristin_Sarkisian
body: Does anyone have any suggestions of comparable platforms? Really like Trello but our company just cannot function this slow.


author: Brian Jackson
body: As someone who works on a team with 25+ boards and over 10,000 cards, I can tell you this is definitely a Trello problem. The same issue happens in Incognito with no extensions and in all browsers. Trello just wasn't build to handle this.  

Thinking about looking at alternatives.


author: Tami Liss
body: Adding to this thread.

Trello was being *incredibly* laggy in Chrome. Opening it in Chrome's **Incognito Mode** made a *huge* difference, though I haven't narrowed down which of my extensions may have been the cause (or if something else is the cause).

However I have coworkers who also experience lag in un-modified Safari, which I don't use.

The fact that two of the biggest browsers in use don't play well with Trello, and that it's this fragile in the first place, is...concerning. They should also really add these potential causes to their official troubleshooting Help page: <https://help.trello.com/article/1089-troubleshooting-a-slow-board>


author: Will
body: I had a similar issue. Boards with 400 - 600 cards, each containing a few attachments, would fail to load completely on my less powerful tablet, while on my more powerful laptop they would load, but often very slowly or even not at all. Even the main trello page where all my teams are presented would fail to load on occasion. Turns out the problem was that I had too many heavy teams ( 100 or so, each with 3 - 4 heavy boards ). When I deleted 90% of them, individual boards loaded much faster. Weird.


author: Coolman
body: This is because Trello sold its proprietorship to Atlassian. Atlassian's server is x10 slower than Trello's server. This is the payment for you to migrate to Atlassian's server.


author: Rob
body: Why does [@atlassian](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/62094) neve answer? how can this be? so many people having issues with their services and they don?t care? It is the same with the request for dark mode in the desktop app...hundreds of comments of users...no a single reply from [@atlassian](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/62094). I really don?t get this.   
This topic here is serious. In my company I am the only one that can hold us at Trello...everyone else wants to change to another provider (everyone knows)...so what shall I do as an Trello enthusiast that wants to keep using this service but is literally forced away by the owners of the business? that?s kind of crazy to me...

comments: author: Maxime Veber
body: Probably because they are only part of the problem. I have no idea what extension is causing the problem (I have nothing really special) but when I try on firefox with no extensions, it as fast as expected.


author: Amy Livingston
body: I've disabled all extensions in Chrome except for the ones I absolutely need for work (Application launcher for Drive and Office Editing for Docs, Sheets, and Slides), and it hasn't helped.


author: Gerry Sol?
body: What I've learned after what I wrote:  

- I was using The Great Suspender Chrome extension, that avoided my Trello tabs to sleep. Once I left them to sleep, slowliness stop.

- I have a new faster laptop with more memory. All my Chrome extensions are now open, and Trello flies super fast.


author: savANDY
body: In my case, the problem was the "Trello Card Numbers" extension. I disabled it and everything is smooth and fast on a board with 3.000 + cards


author: Maxime Veber
body: Each click takes at least 1sec on my board. This is in best case. It may take up to 10sec. Lucky I have a powerful i5 inside my computer. I can't imagine those with less power.

I miss times where trello had the exact same features but was lightning fast.

comments: author: Buzz Taves
body: I find it slow too. I type ahead of what prints on the screen with Trello. Also, when I go back to make corrections I am unable to see the cursor for 2-3 seconds so I do not know where I am in the text to make a correction until I wait it out.


author: Amy Livingston
body: Only 10 seconds? It's taking me up to 10 \*minutes\* to load a card! Our board has 17 lists with anywhere from 4 to 221 cards per list. And I can't do anything to reduce this number, because that decision is up to management, and they insist we have everything on a single board.

Is there any other software we could be using that can handle this volume? This is really eating into my productivity.


author: Maxime Veber
body: Recounted. A card opening is indeed 1 to 2 min.

In fact it depend on the board size.


author: Thomas Murphy
body: I've had a lot of progress with my boards recently. I did this by using the network tab on inspect element to record the entire DOM load of a trello board (which for me was around 4 minutes!), saving this as a .har file and including it as a linked attachment to a trello bug report. They released a fix (which they were already apparently working) and my board load time went down to around 6 seconds, which was amazing. So I suggest spamming their bug reports with heaps of data.


author: keyun_Ren
body: I experienced the slow when I open on Safari, and then I change it to Chrome, everything seems fine again.

try to change the browser and see how it works

comments: author: Kristin_Sarkisian
body: We use Chrome - super slow still


author: Alan Berezin
body: It takes 60 sec for the app to initialize on latest Chrome on OS X 10.14.5 Mojave. Subsequent clicks are fast.


author: Matthew N
body: Hi there

I'm not experiencing any slowness issues, and I haven't come across other complains of the same either. It sounds like a browser extension may be the root cause. Either disable the extension or launch Trello in an incognito tab without extensions and see if the issue persists. If not, then it's certainly the extension you recently installed.

comments: author: Gerry Sol?
body: What I've learned after what I wrote:  

- I was using The Great Suspender Chrome extension that avoided my Trello tabs to sleep. Once I left them to sleep, slowness stop.

- I have now a new faster laptop with more memory (i7 16Gb Ram). All my Chrome extensions are now open, and Trello flies superfast.