Hello fellow endeavouros users,
i havent found a topic on this so i hoped id find a solution to this.
Nemo file manager as great as it is has a huge problem of becoming slow/laggy with many thumbnails in a directory.
Is there a way to possibly make nemo more responsive without disabling thumbnails?
There was a solution in the mint forums but alas it being ubundu based it didnt really help me much.
First of all, I’m no nemo expert, so the following stuff may not be accurate. 
This is the nemo developer’s issues site: https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues
Maybe some of the threads could be of help?
Or you could start a new thread there about the problem.
But according to the threads there it seems to be a constant issue with nemo… disabling thumbnails and some extensions might help.
thanks i tried going through their issues but other than https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues/2291
there wasnt really anything and even in there they only solution was a new version which is out for quite a while now.
i dont have any additional extensions but the 4 defaults ones tho i have now disabled 2 of them.
As a workaround, maybe another file manager like thunar could help?
im using caja as a backup, tho the only thing that really irks me about it is how its closing tabs, it appears to open the last active or open tab.
if i could set it to always open the tab to the right like nemo it would probably be my daily driver.
Are you running Nemo on Cinnamon or another desktop?
i am running nemo on cinnamon
i actually had this problem in all instances i have used it so far, cinnamon, xfce, kde, distro also doesnt make a difference, eventually with enough time an open tab slows down to a crawl.
the said directory sometimes has as little as a dozen up to several hundred thumbails to deal with, but i dont think the constant in and out makes a difference.
I have run Cinnamon a lot and i have not run into this. What i would do is take the thumbnail (images) out of the equation and see if the problem goes away. Maybe you can move them to an external source for now to test. Did you also try turning thumbnail view off?
well, the problem is on both an external and internal harddrive, tho i have not used the drive the os is on just yet, i will do so and see if anything changes.
meanwhile im open to any other suggestion for nemo or whatever other file manager has the performance of caja but the tab closing to the right like nemo.
I meant moving them off the system and not having those image thumbnails being cached by the system. So having them on external storage temporarily but not using it.
Edit: The problem is if you have a lot of images and the thumbnail view is turned on they all have to load everytime. Depending on your system and memory it can drag it down.
im sorry i dont know what you mean by this then.
when it comes to memory and the system im confident both are more than adequate.
What i meant was moving them off the device temporarily but not having them plugged into the system via an external drive or usb so the thumbnails are not being cached. It takes them out of the equation to see if it’s the caching of the thumbnails that is causing the Lag\Slowdown.
im araid i cant really do that, however i moved the directory towards the same drive as the os, it might be just placebo but it feels more responsive than before, most likely because the os drive is ssd and the other internal one is hhd?
I’m not sure i understand why you can’t but that’s how i would test it to see. If you have a lot of images it will cause it to slow down and lag most likely. When you say move the directory towards the same drive. Do you mean put it on the same drive as opposed to an external drive. That might work.
i have two internal drives, one ssd (with the os)
and one hhd, the folder was in the hhd drive but i have moved them to the other sd drive but as more time ahs passed now im a bit more confident in saying just having the directory on the SD drive solved the problem, for now that is.
id probably wouldnt even had thought of doing so without help so thank you.
Yes, SSD drivers are much faster than HDD drives.
But may be worth checking that your SSD has enough space, e.g. with terminal command
df -h
If the SSD becomes full or near full (like 90% full), it may cause other issues.
the drive is only 67% full, im always making sure to tidy up my drives as best as i can so they wont be near full