electron: [Bug]: The first call of `loadFile`/`loadURL` takes 2 seconds

In comparison:

• Neutralino.js takes 700 ms total (from the program start to show the rendered HTML).

• NW.js takes 450-500 ms total.

UPD:

While Electron takes:

With the old Electron 7.1.1:

• 200 ms to start executing JS code
• ~1.4 seconds for rendering HTML.

With the new Electron 16.0.6:

• 1-1.2 seconds to start executing JS code
• 1.8-2.3 seconds for rendering HTML.

So, total time is: 3+ seconds with Electron 16.0.6.

3 SECONDS for the opening of the hello world example? Really?

@herrbasan FWIW, the VS Code binary itself is signed.

I tried signing my own binary (not the installer) as well as all .dlls, but it didn’t fix the problem. I also tried to not load a file from the file system (which could trigger a virus scanner), but just a hardcoded HTML string from memory like this:

splash.on('show', async () => {
  await splash?.webContents.loadURL('data:text/html;charset=utf-8,! Content loaded !');
})
splash.show()

That didn’t fix the problem either, but at least there is some benefit with this approach: we show the window as early as possible and only start loading the URL when the window is already shown. Until then the windows is blank, but I think the earlier feedback is worth it.

Here is my question, how does VS Code solve the problem? It is not plagued with the slow startup times as other Electron based apps. From what I understand, you can’t really sign an electron app, you can only sign the installer. So I wonder if MS is just sneaky and has whitelisted VS Code in the Defender database?!

@Tarrowren

Could you test with these code :

const {app, BrowserWindow} = require('electron')
function createWindow () {
  console.time("load")
  const mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
    width: 800,
    height: 600,
  })
  mainWindow.loadFile('index.html')
  mainWindow.once('ready-to-show', () => {
    console.timeEnd("load")
  })
}
app.whenReady().then(() => {
  createWindow()
})

It usually take 2 seconds on my pc.

I suggest you test it yourself, it is not difficult to add a whitelist. Of course it’s okay to shutdown the antivirus software. 😀

@ckerr your Fiddle is missing an await, so you’re not actually timing the time it takes for it to load just the time the loadFile call takes

This issue has been automatically marked as stale. If this issue is still affecting you, please leave any comment (for example, “bump”), and we’ll keep it open. If you have any new additional information—in particular, if this is still reproducible in the latest version of Electron or in the beta—please include it with your comment!

As we see, This problem has been around for a long time(From 2015) Should we do something about it?

Someone said submiting executable file to MS Defender Team would solve this issue, I’m not sure. https://stackoverflow.com/a/68121212

This is a problem caused by antivirus software

Add to whitelist

How about this issue’s progress?