Howdy, viewing photo's on the Dropbox website is painfully slow. Is there a way to get better performance from the Dropbox website when viewing photos? When I use the profiler in Firefox I can see that the previews.dropbox.com takes 3.3 seconds to reply, is this normal? 1Gbit fiber connection, tested with Google Fiber speed Test 64GB RAM 16 Cores Tested with Chrome, Safari, Firefox on Windows, MacOS and Linux (Ubuntu, Arch, Manjaro and Debian) Rebooted every machine 7 times, just so I can write this *Not many useful labels in the "choose a label" list

Hi @Megan, @Thijxx Same issue here ... 13k of Photos which are unviewable using the Dropbox website. As already mentioned the Dropbox Website loads the first 50 or so then needs to re-cache or re-index the whole collection again when viewing/scrolling .... Clearing the browser cache makes no difference, the only thing that helps is significantly reducing the number of images stored .... For reference OneDrive and Google Photos Websites work fine with >20k of images, give it a test with some images - its a Dropbox issue.

Thijxx ... No problemI’m not an expert on indexed or cached images, please correct me if needed . Ideally, our photos and thumbnails should be indexed and cached the first time they are viewed. This will improve performance when revisiting Dropbox, as the website wouldn’t need to re-index or re-cache most of our content, only the new or changed items.The issue with Dropbox is that when we close our browser and reopen it later, it has to re-cache and re-index our entire photo library from scratch repeatedly, including any new photos. My collection contains over 13,000 photos, which can take 20 to 30 minutes, significantly impacting the performance of viewing and scrolling through photos on Dropbox.com. Even when the indexing has been completed the viewing performance is still slow with place holders showing for a few seconds when scrolling though the images.I sent a support request with a comparison showing OneDrive and Dropbox side by side loading and caching the same set of photos. OneDrive took less than 5 seconds, while Dropbox took 1 minute and 40 seconds.I’m not saying OneDrive is the solution; it was just used for comparison. Google might even be better. 😊Basically Dropbox has issues not us 🤔

No offence taken @Thijxx and yes you're correct ... I only mentioned the other issues as I think that they're possibly linked. ... anyhow back to the Photos 😉 @Walter... In case you have only recently added these photos to your account, please wait 24 hours to see if the problem is only transient.My photo collection is months/years old and it make no difference as old and new photos don't display quickly just the place holders are visible. If the problem persists, please check that this isn’t a browser problem, by using a different browser, loading the Dropbox website in an incognito window, and/or disabling any plugins or extensions you may have running on your browse.In an effort to help you to assist us I built a new PC with just the default Windows 11, Service Packs and Edge running incognito installed. It make no difference to the Photo's displaying slowly on your website. In case the above didn't help, please make sure that you don’t have anything blocking your connection to the Dropbox servers such as an antivirus, firewall, security program, proxy or VPN.I haven't any issues with my fibre network plus as noted above I built a separate new machine to test. You could alternatively try a different network as well.@Thijxx has the same problem so this rules out any network issue at my end.... As already mentioned competitor products work fine . @Walter can you explain the difference between the way the iPhone IOS Dropbox app and the Dropbox website views/loads photos.For me the IOS app works perfectly viewing online photos but the website is very poor - Why?

Hi @Megan Now onto the issue at hand here: in regards to the antivirus and firewalls, have you tried the steps on your end? I'm asking since it's a bit unclear.Sorry about that ... I built a new standard Windows 11 PC with the Default Windows Security installed running the Browser Edge in Cognito mode. Nothing else was installed. Just to confirm I disabled the Firewall and Antivirus and this made no difference (screen shot below to prove/confirm) When raising a ticket can you also include @Thijxx as they raised the issue and I joined in as a frustrated end user .... many thanks.

@Thijxx Quick update .... Support have been in contact and its been escalated ... keep you posted

Website Photos view is slow | The Dropbox Community

29 Replies

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Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
2 years ago
Hey Thijxx - thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Can you just clarify if you're noticing this on an incognito or private browsing window with no plugins or extensions running as well?

Also, have you tried another network since you first noticed this?

Let me know more and we'll take it from there.
Thijxx
Helpful | Level 6
2 years ago
Yes I run extensions, I block your Adobe trackers and your Qualtrics "Experience Manager" but when I use private browsing, without the blocker, it is just as slow. First page of photo's takes 7 seconds.
When switching to a 5G dongle the performance is the same.

Could you tell me what I should expect in terms of performance? Should the photos page load sub-second or is that not fair?
Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
2 years ago
Thanks for the additional information Thijxx

Could you also clarify if this happens only when browsing the Photos page or if it's affecting other folders of yours as well?
Thijxx
Helpful | Level 6
2 years ago
Other folders load fine except the photo preview at the top of the page called 'Suggested from your activity'
Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
2 years ago
I see, thanks for clarifying that for me Thijxx

May I ask approximately how many photos you've stored in your Dropbox account?
Thijxx
Helpful | Level 6
2 years ago
Oof, that is a hard question! I suppose somewhere around 50K
Nancy
Dropbox Community Moderator
2 years ago
Hey @Thijxx, hope it’s OK to jump in. Since the number of photos is quite large, this may be the issue here.

However, when did this start? Is this something that started only recently or has the issue been going on for a while now?
Thijxx
Helpful | Level 6
2 years ago
It has been this way since I can remember. If you want I can take a look at how many photo's are cached but I guess not many because when I scroll down a bit, it needs to load for about 10 seconds 😂 and this makes it impossible to casually browse my photo's.
If I have 2 million photo's or 2000, loading the first 50 should always perform more or less the same, right?
Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
2 years ago
Hey @Thijxx, let me also jump in here!

Yeah pretty much. I'd also like to ask you to clear your browser's cache if that's not too much of a trouble.

You also mentioned this happens only with the "Suggested" pictures, right? Meaning if you try to locate a picture in your account and then preview it, do you notice the same behavior?
Charlie Windsor
Helpful | Level 7
2 years ago
Hi @Megan, @Thijxx
Same issue here ... 13k of Photos which are unviewable using the Dropbox website. As already mentioned the Dropbox Website loads the first 50 or so then needs to re-cache or re-index the whole collection again when viewing/scrolling .... Clearing the browser cache makes no difference, the only thing that helps is significantly reducing the number of images stored .... For reference OneDrive and Google Photos Websites work fine with >20k of images, give it a test with some images - its a Dropbox issue.