# Speed usability issues at scale with thousands of notes

**URL:** https://community.silverbullet.md/t/speed-usability-issues-at-scale-with-thousands-of-notes/4413
**Category:** Troubleshooting
**Created:** [September 30, 2026, 1:29pm UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/speed-usability-issues-at-scale-with-thousands-of-notes/4413 "2026-09-30T13:29:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![hurifiva](https://community.silverbullet.md/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/a698b9/32.png) [@hurifiva](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/hurifiva)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2026, 1:29pm UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/speed-usability-issues-at-scale-with-thousands-of-notes/4413/1 "2026-09-30T13:29:45Z")

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Migrating from Joplin, I have notebooks with ~5k and ~25k documents, with a small amount of linked image attachments and no links between notes. Both notebooks are unusable in Silverbullet right now for production use and the problem is more apparent in the 25k notebook. Smaller notebooks (100 notes) seem fine.

Seeing:

1. slow loading of the new Nav Tree, which makes the overall UI laggy
2. 1 to 5 seconds to open a new note. Seems random how long it takes
3. Silversearch is unbearably slow. About 15 seconds for a search, whereas Joplin is instant

I am so impressed with the design principles of Silverbullet and the love the git version control, central server design, and extensibility with lua that it saddens me that it can't perform at scale right now.

I am wondering if these problems are more structural due to the design backbone or whether they are more easily fixable.

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### Author: ![zef](https://community.silverbullet.md/user_avatar/community.silverbullet.md/zef/32/7_2.png) [@zef](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/zef)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2026, 3:51pm UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/speed-usability-issues-at-scale-with-thousands-of-notes/4413/2 "2026-09-30T15:51:44Z")

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Yeah, I think it's rare for people to have THIS much content (I have about ~2.2k pages right now in my main space). But let's treat this as a challenge. Can you tell me about more about the structure of this? Are there folders there, is this a flat note list?

Also, what browser are you using, or are you using the desktop app?

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### Author: ![hurifiva](https://community.silverbullet.md/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/a698b9/32.png) [@hurifiva](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/hurifiva)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2026, 4:21pm UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/speed-usability-issues-at-scale-with-thousands-of-notes/4413/3 "2026-09-30T16:21:09Z")

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Flat list. Tried Firefox, Chrome, and the latest edge Electron desktop app for Windows. Tried two different Linux servers for the docker app (Up to 32 core 2.8Ghz + 128GB RAM).

Most of the notes are small... less than 30 words. I think it's kind of inevitable that content grows to this amount over time if it's used as a daily driver for quick notes or for people migrating years of notes from Evernote / Joplin / etc.

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### Author: ![zef](https://community.silverbullet.md/user_avatar/community.silverbullet.md/zef/32/7_2.png) [@zef](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/zef)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2026, 4:30pm UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/speed-usability-issues-at-scale-with-thousands-of-notes/4413/4 "2026-09-30T16:30:43Z")

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Cool, let me dive into what we can do here.

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### Author: ![zef](https://community.silverbullet.md/user_avatar/community.silverbullet.md/zef/32/7_2.png) [@zef](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/zef)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2026, 2:20pm UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/speed-usability-issues-at-scale-with-thousands-of-notes/4413/5 "2026-10-01T14:20:27Z")

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Ok. Spent much of the day on various performance improvements. If you’re able to test the edge builds of SilverBullet server you can see if this makes things better. It should (note: I didn’t touch silversearch)

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### Author: ![hurifiva](https://community.silverbullet.md/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/a698b9/32.png) [@hurifiva](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/hurifiva)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2026, 1:44am UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/speed-usability-issues-at-scale-with-thousands-of-notes/4413/6 "2026-10-02T01:44:00Z")

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Incredible - thanks so much! I just tested it and it's much faster even in the 25k note space. Now just need fast full text search and it's a full Joplin/Evernote replacement.

By the way, I am using a few lua scripts to make the NavTree sort by last modified and to make Quick Notes automatically rename to the first line. Is there a place to share these scripts?

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### Author: ![zef](https://community.silverbullet.md/user_avatar/community.silverbullet.md/zef/32/7_2.png) [@zef](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/zef)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2026, 6:03am UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/speed-usability-issues-at-scale-with-thousands-of-notes/4413/7 "2026-10-02T06:03:58Z")

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> [@hurifiva](#):
>
> Is there a place to share these scripts?

Not a very formal one, but there's a category here that people use to share some things: [Plugs and Libraries - SilverBullet Community](https://community.silverbullet.md/c/plugs-libraries/14)
