I’m not sure where it comes from but I strongly noticed the startup time of the iOS app getting slightly worse over time.
Sometimes I want to quickly open the app to add some thoughts in but get greated with the splash screen, then loading spinner.
I am archiving my Omnifocus tasks every month.
Settings says: 47 projects, 165 actions, 1148 zip files.
The engineer in my says that probably zip file operations are very costly. Can I somehow tell Omnifocus to consolidate / optimize all remaining zip files into the smallest number possible?
What else is affecting start up time? Amount of tasks vs amount of projects vs amount of perspectives on the home screen?
You need to compact your database. That many zip files is impressive, but not in a positive way😅. The sync server should be doing this for you, though.
I had an issue before where I had an out of date sync device that was preventing the compaction from happening, so take a look there if you’re using the Omni Sync Server.
You can. Check sync preferences and the list of registered devices. I had one in red, indicating it hadn’t been synced for a while. Once removed the server compacted my database on the next sync. I hope that’s all you need, too.
You were right, I indeed had a old device in there. After removing, my devices did one big, long sync and the amount of zip files chopped down from 1600 to around 360. Start time and sync is a notable amount faster but still not as snappy as I hoped for 😅. I also still have around 2 zip archives per task but I guess that’s just how the omni db works.
I had no idea that performance is dependent on when devices synced for the last time! Are there more of these under the hood tricks you know of? :)
I’m glad that helped! 360 zip files still sounds like a lot. Perhaps once all the databases are sycned up, the server will compact them down again.
For an immediate fix, though, you could disconnect all devices from syncing and manually compact the database (the option will become available in Settings on iOS or the File menu on the Mac). Then reconnect to sync and it should take on the new compacted database.
The server will take care of things on its own almost always (100-ish zip files seems to be about the highest that I have seen). With background sync on iOS devices, it should be fine. If there’s a device that you sync only on rare occasion, perhaps it’s best to connect it to the sync only when you need it.
