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2026

  • 6 min read

Putting apps to sleep, and waking them in under two seconds

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A shard is a small server. Often a very small one, a VPS with 1 or 2 GB of RAM, and the whole point is that you can install a pile of apps on it and treat them as your own: photos, documents, notes, a recipe box. The trouble is that self-hosted apps are not shy about memory. Immich alone, with its machine-learning workers, will happily take a large bite out of a 2 GB box before you have uploaded a single photo. Install three or four apps like it and the box is full.

  • 6 min read

Unblocking Apps by fixing a Performance Bottleneck

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For a while now there was a problem with the Immich app. On the web it did not start most of the time. If it did, it was painfully slow to start and to load images. Curiously, the mobile app did work. I had been meaning to fix that app in particular, but did not get around to it. But a few days ago, a pass over all the apps to upgrade them revealed the actual problem. It was the same problem that plagued other apps and made them slow, for example KitchenOwl. These apps did work, but they were no fun to use. Long waiting times between action and reaction made them just feel sluggish.