Slow workspaces in synced folders (Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud)

If your workspace lives inside Dropbox, OneDrive, or iCloud Drive, browsing large archives directories can feel sluggish — sometimes even slower than the app itself, since the same slowdown shows up in Finder and ls too. This page explains why, and how to fix it.

Why this happens

Cloud-sync clients don't always keep every file's actual content on your disk. To save local storage, Dropbox (Smart Sync / "online-only" files), OneDrive (Files On-Demand), and iCloud Drive ("Optimize Mac Storage") can replace a file's content with a lightweight placeholder — the file still shows up with its real name and size, but its bytes live only in the cloud until something asks for them.

Listing a directory full of these placeholders is inherently slow: the OS has to consult the sync client (sometimes over the network) for each entry instead of reading local disk metadata directly. This is a property of the synced folder itself, not of this app — the same directory feels slow in Finder, ls, or any other program that reads it. No amount of caching or optimization on the app side can make a cold scan of dataless files fast, because the bottleneck is outside the app's control.

The fix: make the workspace available offline

The reliable fix is to tell the sync client to keep your workspace folder's files fully downloaded (materialized) on disk, instead of online-only placeholders.

Dropbox (macOS):

1. Open Finder and locate your workspace folder inside Dropbox.

2. Right-click the folder.

3. Choose Make available offline (sometimes labeled "Smart Sync" → "Local").

OneDrive (macOS):

1. Open Finder and locate your workspace folder inside OneDrive.

2. Right-click the folder.

3. Choose Always Keep on This Device.

iCloud Drive (macOS):

1. Open Finder and locate your workspace folder inside iCloud Drive.

2. Right-click the folder.

3. Choose Keep Downloaded (or turn off "Optimize Mac Storage" in System Settings → Apple ID → iCloud for a device-wide fix).

Once the sync client finishes materializing the files, directory listings for that workspace should be as fast as any regular local folder.

The in-app notice

Retired (epic #4204, S23/#4227). The app used to detect a synced-folder workspace root and show a one-time in-app notice with a reminder of the fix above. The cloud pivot removed the local-workspace concept the notice depended on (each app instance now points at a cloud workspace, not a user-chosen local folder), so this notice no longer exists. The guidance above still applies to any synced folder you point the External File Editor at — the remaining local-file surface — since the OS-level placeholder slowdown is unrelated to this app.

Recommendation: keep heavy directories outside online-only folders

If you keep a large archive (thousands of notes) and want consistently fast browsing, consider one of these instead of relying on "keep offline" toggles:

• Store the workspace on local disk outside any synced folder, and use your own backup strategy (Time Machine, a separate sync tool that doesn't use placeholder files, etc.).

• If you do want cloud sync, prefer this app's own cloud sync feature, which is designed for this app's data model, over a general-purpose file-sync client's placeholder mechanism.

Small, lightly-synced workspaces are usually fine either way — the slowdown mainly shows up once an archives directory grows large and its files have been demoted to online-only by the sync client's storage-saving heuristics.