TfT Performance: Craft

Craft has, without a doubt, the most beautiful and powerful mobile client of all contenders. But will it still shine when we put a lot of interconnected data in it?

Hej,

And welcome to the benchmark of Craft, which has an impressive track record of delivering great features to their excellent web, desktop, and mobile applications. Craft supports remote and local storage, backlinks, transclusion, and intelligent features like grouping and publishing.

Craft Homepage

If you are new here, you may want to read about the methodology behind this benchmark, look into the machine room and visit the results of Roam Research, Logseq, Obsidian, and RemNote.

Side note

I created the following videos essentially for me to measure the times quickly. I've linked them here to prove the results, but they're probably pretty dull despite being partly time-lapse.

All the diagrams I show here use the same color scheme and order—Blue for the 2,000 data set, turquoise for the 5,000, and green for the 10,000 (not needed here, because Craft reached its limit with just below 5000 pages).

And please remember: We focus here exclusively on the performance figures of some operations. These may be entirely irrelevant for your use case. Also, the numbers say nothing about the tool's other capabilities - so please take the results with a grain of salt.

Importing Files

Importing was unfortunately quite lengthy and annoying. Craft can only import 2,000 files at a time. In addition, unlike the other programs, Craft deletes internal links that point to pages that do not exist during import. So in almost every case, you have to expect a loss of information if you try to import more than 2,000 files.

Craft can only import 2,000 files at once

When importing the 5,000 files into 2x2,000 and 1x1,000, we also reached the block limit of 100,000 blocks. Craft then discards all the files just imported in the last run, and you can start over. With a bit of trial and error, I got pretty close to the limit at 4,818 pages. I didn't count the failed attempts in the times listed here.

Block Limit of 100,000 reached

Importing Markdown Files

2,000

5,000

Application Start Times

Application start times are a real strength of Craft. Here you also notice the native client; as soon as you click on it, it is already loaded.

Application Start Time

Heavy Duty: Searching and references

Opening the pages is another strength of Craft. Almost within the blink of an eye, it also loads the heavy pages. Backlinks aren't open by default; this is an intelligent move to optimize performance.

Open Pages with heavy back-linking

Opening the backlinks, on the other hand, not only took quite a bit of time but also drove up the system's memory usage. Smooth scrolling in the backlinks was no longer possible.

Load the references of highly connected pages

Searching was high-speed, a joy to use. Backlink filtering or advanced queries aren't built in (yet), so I could examine nothing here.

2,000

5,000

Alice in Wonderland: Adding content and exporting

Pasting the chapter from Alice in Wonderland was quick; nothing to complain about, let alone the loading of the image took a moment.

Pasting Text

Export times were ok, nothing exciting but also nothing to complain about.

Export the library

2,000

5,000

Conclusion

On the one hand, we have lightning-fast loading times of the application and the pages and instant search; on the other hand, we have long loading times for the references and significant limitations in importing and the possible amounts of data.

Especially the last mentioned issue is a real problem for a "Tool for Thought" designed for the long term, which is only reduced to a limited extent by multiple Spaces. For comparison, my note collection in Craft currently already includes over 40,000 blocks.

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