How to improve Glide page speed

Help & How To
#1

Any idea how to improve Glide page speed? Here are the results I get from Google PageSpeed Insights (for my app: www.mobile.toddl.co):

Glide - desktop: 26
Glide - mobile: 2

(For reference: PageSpeed Insights)

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#2

Fascinating!!

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#3

Anyone have insights on this?? We should probably try to miniaturise all our pictures as a start?

#4

Hi @StephM, here are a few general ideas:

Data

  1. Data sync: use Glide Tables rather than Google Sheets.
  2. Calculations: create computed columns in Glide Tables rather than in Google Sheets.
  3. Data download to user’s device: use row owners and roles (Private Pro plan) rather than filtering and visibility features. This also has security benefits.

Images

  1. Image hosting: host/upload images within Glide rather than in Google Drive or another server. Caveat: be weary of Glide limits.
  2. Image format: optimize format. For example, jpg in general, png for transparency, gif if few colors/edges or animated graphics, svg for icon/logos.
  3. Image compression: compress your images, especially lossless formats such as png, gif, svg.
  4. Image dimensions: think about if you’re optimizing for the web, smartphone, retina display, etc.

Other
3rd party integrations/features: be picky with the use of Zapier, Integromat, webhooks, Google Sheets, Apps Script, Cloudinary, Quickchart.

Other ideas from @Mark_Turrell

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Glide's biggest problem
Performance 💪
Fastest way to load images?
#5

@nathanaelb When you are referring to these image related suggestions (2,3,4) - are you suggesting these things to be taken care of before pushing that image to glide or you suggesting any option where “image transformation” can be done within or on the fly ( which for now am not sure if its possible ).

Cheers,
-Shiv

#6

Hi @Shiv, when I wrote this I had in mind that images could be optimized before.

But good point, I guess us the app builders could do both: image optimization before pushing to Glide especially if submitted by us, and on the fly transformation especially if submitted by the user.

For on the fly image transformation, see Cloudinary. You’ll find a lot of documentation in the forum already :wink: This would be a 3rd party integration/feature, and the processing of the image might slow down the rendering of the image if the image needed to be displayed in real time?

#7

Yup am aware of this and in fact Kristian even came up with a sample app where it can do copy Glide image to Cloudinary and then delete the Glide version and replace it with Cloudinary version ( after applying image transformations if any ).

All of the 4 image-related points you mentioned were valid and if in the future such things can be controlled within Glide then that would be awesome.

-Shiv

#8

I believe I remember reading somewhere that when uploading images to Glide, the back end of Glide does in fact compress and/or resize images for us.

Edit: I just did a test. I uploaded a high resolution image with the image picker and displayed it. When inspecting the code, the image was resized and it seems the Glide team is using Cloudinary to do this (the image source includes Cloudinary in the URL).

#9

If its doing then good but i wonder why would Glide like to do that without informing users? because image size constraint is there on free/pro accounts.
Also if it does and if there is some way where we can control the level of doing ( even if its with Pro account ) then that would be interesting to explore.

@JackVaughan @Mark Something you can confirm ( or deny ) ? :slight_smile:

-Shiv

#10
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#11

Merci beaucoup @nathanaelb !