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8.12   How can I speed up EagleFiler?

Getting a faster Mac, a faster hard disk (or SSD), or more RAM would of course make everything faster, but there are also some less expensive ways to speed up EagleFiler:

  1. EagleFiler is designed to perform best when it is kept running, with a library open. It will be faster to leave it running (perhaps hidden) in the background than to open and close it each time you add a file to the library. You can easily hide EagleFiler by holding down the Option key as you click to switch to another application. Additionally, leaving EagleFiler running will allow you to use its capture key.
  2. Importing files by dragging them directly into the library’s Files folder and then using Scan for New Files is faster than other methods because it avoids copying the files. Also, this method (as well as the To Import folder) do not require you to wait for EagleFiler to launch and the library to open.
  3. EagleFiler is designed to support multi-gigabyte libraries with many thousands of files. However, as with all software, viewing a library (or folder) with fewer files in it will generally be faster than viewing one with many. (The sizes of the files don’t have much effect on EagleFiler’s performance.) EagleFiler lets you create multiple libraries, so one way to increase performance is to use several smaller libraries instead of one huge one. This can also provide an additional level of organization.
  4. Fewer large mailboxes are generally faster than many small ones. You can combine multiple mailboxes using the Merge Mailboxes command.
  5. Leave e-mail messages in their mailboxes rather than dragging them out into folders (which converts them to individual files). You can merge .eml files back into a mailbox using the Merge Message Files command.
  6. Emptying EagleFiler’s trash will reduce the number of records in the library, and thus speed it up.
  7. Importing files is faster when nothing is selected in the source list, as many sources as possible are hidden or collapsed, and the Activity window is closed.
  8. In order to enable quick searching, EagleFiler maintains indexes of all the files and e-mail messages in a library. By default, EagleFiler indexes for phrase searches. This allows the most flexible searching, but indexing can take a lot of time and disk space. If you don’t need to do phrase searches, you can rebuild the indexes for word searching. This will reduce the size of the indexes and speed up indexing going forward. The How does indexing in EagleFiler work? section has more information about speeding up indexing and searches.
  9. Viewing search results in large documents will be faster if you turn off search match highlighting.
  10. When EagleFiler opens a library, it checks to make sure all of the files are present, backs up the metadata, and copies the tags to the Spotlight comments. You can hold down the Shift key when opening the library to skip these steps, or click the × buttons in the Activity window to cancel them.
  11. Displaying and scrolling the records list will be faster if you tell EagleFiler not to calculate folder sizes.
  12. Opening a library will be faster if the selected source (when you closed the library) does not contain many files. For example, if you had Records selected, and it was sorted by modification date, EagleFiler would have to load all the files (and possibly all the e-mail messages) and look up their modification dates. If a subfolder (or no source at all) were selected, the library would open more quickly because EagleFiler would initially only have to load the contents of that folder.
  13. When creating a smart folder, put the most restrictive criteria higher in the list. Use the Search inside pop-up menu and checkboxes to restrict the search as much as possible.
  14. Searching is faster if you tell EagleFiler to search for whole words rather than partial words, i.e. uncheck Match Partial Words in the search menu.
  15. Searching is faster if EagleFiler’s index files (the .efindex files inside the .eflibrary package) have been defragmented using a utility such as iDefrag.
  16. Uncheck Copy tags to Spotlight comments.
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