Why my fzf-lua is soo slow?

[FahimAnayet]

It used to be fast. Well, not as fast as LeaderF, But It was good. I switched to this one because it integrates perfectly with neovim and have minimal and nice ui. I faced this slowness for a long time. So, I created a minimal config, but it was still super slow. The UI loads fast but then takes like a second or two to show files. And here is just 4 files 😆 still takes time.

Here is the config I'm using in Lazy plugin manager. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but what?!

	--> fuzzy file finder
	{
		"ibhagwan/fzf-lua",
		cmd = "FzfLua",
		dependencies = { "nvim-tree/nvim-web-devicons" },
		-- config = get_setup("fzfLua", { config = true }), [full config]
		config = function ()
			require("fzf-lua").setup({
                defaults = {
                    formatter = "path.filename_first",
                    path_shorten = 5,
                },
            })
		end
	},

Screen.Recording.2025-01-25.at.7.19.03.PM.mov

Well this other plugin is for showing that although my laptop is ancient 🥲 but it's not that slow

Screen.Recording.2025-01-25.at.7.34.55.PM.mov

[ibhagwan]

It used to be fast.

Can you pinpoint to when was that? maybe a specific commit?
Can you try different profiles (try max-perf) ?

Once you isolate what is causing this I can work on it.

As for LeaderF it doesn't spawn an externap process (fzf) so it's able to show the window faster while fzf-lua has to open a term buffer and run fzf, therefore the initial spawn will always be slower than plugins that don't spawn a term (telescope, etc).

Fzf-lua speed comes into play when there are millions of lines / files in the project.

[ibhagwan]

Thank you for super quick response. Unfortunately can not pin point since when I'm facing this issue. Maybe a from year or so ago. Not a deal-breaker for me, but if can be fixed that would be super awesome!

A year range doesn’t give me much to work with :)

Could this also be a config issue relating terminal auto commands? Have you tried with mini.sh? Are you on windows?

no Idea what is this max-perf means

It’s a “profile” of settings, run :FzfLua profiles or :FzfLua profiles load=max-perf, read the README if you wanna set this in your setup.

[FahimAnayet]

Sorry for late response. I've tried mini.sh and FzfLua profiles load=max-perf no luck. I'm on macos sequoia 15.3.1
But I found something interesting. I've formatted and re install macos on my mac pro and then I cloned my dotfile config. then fzf become normal again. then I had to re install again for some reeason and again cloned dot files. but this time it become slow again 😆 very weired. at first I thought my macbook air 2017 is become obsolete and slow, but now my mac pro is same which led me to think that it's maybe a config issue of my shells config or maybe something else but not an issue of fzflua or neovim.
Thank you for your hard work and kind responses. I'm closing for now, If I find the culprit i'll share it here.

[ibhagwan]

Sorry for late response. I've tried mini.sh and FzfLua profiles load=max-perf no luck. I'm on macos sequoia 15.3.1 But I found something interesting. I've formatted and re install macos on my mac pro and then I cloned my dotfile config. then fzf become normal again. then I had to re install again for some reeason and again cloned dot files. but this time it become slow again 😆 very weired. at first I thought my macbook air 2017 is become obsolete and slow, but now my mac pro is same which led me to think that it's maybe a config issue of my shells config or maybe something else but not an issue of fzflua or neovim. Thank you for your hard work and kind responses. I'm closing for now, If I find the culprit i'll share it here.

Ty for the update and good luck!

[FahimAnayet]

After very long time another weird thing happened. I've switched from macOS to linux to my macbook Air 2017 (As future versions will be only for arm so Open core legacy patcher(oclp) may not work anymore). And under linux fzfLua is like a beast!!! Super buttery smooth. I also had a really old laptop running linux too (Intel i3-3217U) tried cloning my dotfiles in it too. Also smooth!!! I guess the slowness was because of oclp, but other similar fuzzy finders were normal on oclp 😐 IDK. But I'm happy now 😃

All three laptops are now running pure ArchLinux(BTW) 😆
[Air arch+KDE; Pro & hp pavilion(old one) arch no DE]

[ibhagwan]

After very long time another weird thing happened. I've switched from macOS to linux to my macbook Air 2017 (As future versions will be only for arm so Open core legacy patcher(oclp) may not work anymore). And under linux fzfLua is like a beast!!! Super buttery smooth. I also had a really old laptop running linux too (Intel i3-3217U) tried cloning my dotfiles in it too. Also smooth!!! I guess the slowness was because of oclp, but other similar fuzzy finders were normal on oclp 😐 IDK. But I'm happy now 😃

All three laptops are now running pure ArchLinux(BTW) 😆
[Air arch+KDE; Pro & hp pavilion(old one) arch no DE]

OCLP debugging is beyond my pay grade ATM but thanks for the update :)
I’m also running Linux on old hardware, MacBook Pro from 2015, faster than my wife’s new MacOS bloatware lol