Ways to Fix Gmail Slow Loading Issues

Nothing personal, but the past few months, Google and its services seem to bug me up. Erroneous search outputs, failure to show images in Google Image searches, Google hangs, unrelated search outputs, missing Google calendar entries, worst….failure of calendar items to send me an SMS, which somehow led me to miss one of my appointments…. But one thing that really bothers me most is recently, Gmail has been really slow in loading, both in PC and mobile use. We really have been dependent on Gmail on our e-mails that past few years and somehow, the Java script loading really bothers me of.

While it is really meaningless to report this to Google considering bulk of our mail transactions are on individual and free accounts anyway, we have tried to do some workarounds to check on how to resolve this issue. And considering Google, I am sure that they are already trying to resolve this issue by the way of voluminous complaints going around the Internet on this (try Googling it….), it may take a bit of time for them to completely resolve the issue. And yes, business users get resolved first, not individual and free users.And yes, we have to abide with the saying that “technology is not perfected the first time around….”

This article details tips on how to temporarily resolve it, without depending on Google for help:

a) Try disabling some of the functions that you do not use.

Try enabling only the features that you really need. You can do this safely and effectively by disabling all the Gmail Labs features, testing the speed, enabling one feature, and then re-testing the speed. Repeat this until a slowdown occurs. You will know which Labs feature is the culprit and you can disable it to avoid slowness. For me, I temporarily disabled Google Chat and Google Docs, and there are performance improvements noted.

b) Disable browser extensions or plugins.

If you are running Mozilla Firefox with extensions installed, your memory usage may be particularly high. Following a similar procedure as in the first tip above: disable all extensions, test the browser speed, enable one extension, re-test the speed, and repeat ad nauseam as necessary. Once a slowdown occurs the extension causing the problem will be known. Then disable that extension, and add others as needed. On my other computer which is using Firefox, I’ve tried this one. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not, because the browser plug-ins and extensions are directly related to the computer’s resources, not on Google. And please take note, this is more time consuming that the Gmail lab tips above.

c) Use the HTML mode.

Although the email interface really does not look good, it really helps speed up things. But there are sacrifices here…. There would be no bulk file attachment functionalities.

d) Use a third-party e-mail client.

This one really worked for me. I’ve used Outlook on my MS-Windows 7 unit, and used Mozilla Thunderbird on my Linux unit. Both are on IMAP mode so that I can still fetch my emails on Gmail mobile mode.

e) Show fewer messages

Reduce the number of conversations shown on each page by adjusting the maximum page size option to 25 under the General settings. Yes, it works too.

f) Clear your browser’s cache.

Sometimes we get so focused on a problem that we look to the most complex solutions in addressing that problem. But sometimes, the simpliest thing works. A stale browser cache may leave some unnecessary remnants behind. Flush the browser’s cache and start with a clean slate. Most browers have this in the Options – Preferences menu.

But what I did is to  use an automatic cache cleaner everytime I start my computer… Nothing beats using a fresh browser cache every boot-up.

g) Delete or archive old mails.

We have observed that Gmail will take extra time to load If your inbox is filled with excess mails. So It’s better for you to delete all the mails that you don’t require or is of no use and you can save a little load on your Gmail.

These tips should help in increasing Gmail’s load times and make transition and transfer between folders faster.

/vdr