SourceTree 2.0 is horribly slow and not scaling well on Windows 10

Saleem Mirza April 28, 2017

I have just installed SourceTree 2.0.19.1 on my Windows 10 machine and unfortunately, it was a big disapointment. 

It's not only loading repository and commit history very very slow as compared to older version but also not scalling well. I can see Icons and text are overlapping on left side of window. Please see image attached and also give us a way to download older verison. We do expect some QA before rolling it out.

My screen resolution is 1920x1080 with 125% text scalling (recommended).

 

SourceTree.PNG

22 comments

Ana Retamal
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 4, 2017

Hi Saleem, this issue has already been reported as a bug and you can find it at SRCTREEWIN-7039

As you can see in the comment from Michael Minns, they're already working on fixing it :) You can watch it to be notified of further updates, and comment on it if there's something you'd like to ask.

Hope this helps!

Ana

ChunNorris May 22, 2017

How about the "horribly slow" part? 

I'm having the exact same issue as OP. As you pointed out that the UI DPI issue has been reported. But how about the "horribly slow" issue? Does it have anything to do with the DPI? 

I was using SourceTree 1.9 really well. The "horribly slow" only occur at 2.0

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Sandip Kumar May 24, 2017

Seriously what is wrong with 2.0 amazingly slow

sjamesmccarthy May 26, 2017

I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing this. I have 7 repos and the app under latest Win10 build, 32GB RAM, i7 and it takes 12 seconds to load. 

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Gianluca Ghettini October 30, 2017

tt

Roberto buzzai April 12, 2018

Same problem here!

Terribly slow on Windows 10... :(

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Charles Cook April 17, 2018

I'm on the verge of dropping source tree - it's only getting worse since v 2.0.  It should not take minutes to do git operations on relatively small repos.

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Charles Cook April 17, 2018

I've gone back to 1.10.x as 2 is just terrible.  Fwiw, when running 2 csrss.exe would peg a core to 100% and bring the entire windows interface to a grinding hault.  After about a minute windows starts gathering two error reports and then the program sometimes crashes out.

Jérémie Faucher-Goulet April 17, 2018

I bow to your endurance... I finally gave up and dropped it a year ago myself.
However I have yet to find a tool I am fully satisfied with as a replacement.

But after waiting for so long with fixes, I have almost lost hope on picking up SourceTree again.

Some of my colleagues stuck with 1.x version, I moved to a "combination of tools".

Charles Cook April 17, 2018

"Some of my colleagues stuck with 1.x version, I moved to a "combination of tools"."

It's a shame, because if it just worked well, it would be perfect.  I'm probably going to have to rely on a mix of 1.x and other tools.  It's absolutely ruined the GIT experience for new users.

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Jérémie Faucher-Goulet April 17, 2018

I fully agree it's a shame. Even paid software doesn't come close to achieving the proper design philosophy for a Git client like Atlassian did with SourceTree.

I can say however, it made me realize just how powerful and great the default command-line client is, I've learned to love it when combined with other tools for visualization, staging and handling merge conflicts.

But some users will never touch a command line interface, even with a 10-foot pole, so yes, it totally ruined it for new users.

cristiam April 8, 2019

Just use Git Kraken: https://www.gitkraken.com/, this is unacceptable 

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ChunNorris May 9, 2019

Just an update: SourceTree 3.0 doesn't have these problems for me. 

Charles Cook May 10, 2019

I'll give version 3 a shot, thank you.

Nina Cording May 29, 2017

I can confirm SourceTree running slow on Windows 7, also 32GB ram with 8x i7 CPU.

So it's not only Win 10.

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Doug Rosenfeld October 12, 2017

Ana - do you have a bug for the slowness in 2.0?

Ricardo Salcedo June 7, 2017

Updated to 2.1.2.4 on Windows 7 a few days ago, and the performance seems much better now!

sschilz June 13, 2017

If you read the Blog entry on the release for SourceTree 2.0, it says that the way they got the speed up was by "adding a hybrid LibGit2 handler under the hood".

To take advantage of this, you need to make sure you are using the embedded git, not a version of git from your path... 

Go to Tools -> Options -> Git Tab, then click on the "Embedded Git" button.  (The currently active choice appears kind of greyed out).  If you were formerly using "system Git", you will see it download the embedded Git.  Restart SourceTree, and voila! Much Improved performance!

Screenshot below shows the relevant options AFTER I switched to embedded Git:

2017_06_13_SourceTreeUseEmbeddedGit.png

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Ian Coast June 15, 2017

I was having the slow issue.  This seems to make the difference.  Thanks!

Ian Coast June 26, 2017

This helped for a little while, but I'm back to it being useless.

softelvdm June 26, 2017

Yes, whenver I restart SourceTree it behaves for while and eventually starts being slow again. Interestingly, the log files have no information.

Assimilater July 26, 2017

Except...the embedded git can't handle authentication very well, it never has...how is using System Git possibly a problem? If I open up a shell and type "git status" it gives me file status immediately...while sourcetree takes FOREVER

Vladimir Cascarade December 18, 2017

Thanks @sschilz. With your suggestion SourceTree has improved performance by a ton. I'm on W10

sschilz December 18, 2017

@Vladimir Cascarade - glad it helped!

Roberto buzzai April 12, 2018

Worked for me as well.

Thanks

softelvdm June 23, 2017

Ever since upgrading to 2.1.2.5 it is horribly slow when open submodules, another repo, clicking on a commit, and, and and...

It's not all the time. It works fine for a while and then it gets horribly slow.

I tried a number of things, like making sure not to use symlinks for repos, turned of spell check (that was a problem in 1.9.x), and switched to embedded Git (as opposed to System Git, (Tools, Options, Git)) and nothing helped. At this point SourceTree is becoming useless (I have used it for years). I installed GitKraken, SmartGit, and neither have any performance problems with the exact same repos.

Sandip Kumar June 26, 2017

I agree it is getting useless.

Jesper Kondrup June 26, 2017

Same here, it's insanely slow. (win10, 2.1.2.5)

mykolad June 27, 2017

Same issue for me. On one given repository with about 8 files changed "git status" command is executed instantly while SourceTree takes 6-7 seconds to update it. 
Switching to embedded Git helps to reduce it to about 3 seconds.

Andrey Ovsiankin July 16, 2017

It was the best git client. Now it's blows and whistles everywhere. It is now freezes, hangs, this annoying "progress circles" rotating all the time.

It was a git client. Now this is a 'nice tabs and rotators'. But I need a git client, guys! I'm not going to look this 'circles' instead of work!

KevinGelking August 10, 2017

Strange! For me, 2.1.2.5 (clean install, no mercurial, 'push all tags' disabled in push settings) is the best working SourceTree ever. Its UI is responsive and it doesn't consume massive CPU in background.

joedoe August 11, 2017

experienced exactly the same both on Windows 7 and Windows 10. insanely slow, restarting helps for some minutes, a pity as it used to be my favourite git tool

Pedro Moreira June 28, 2017

It seems that every click I make in source tree fires a loading that lasts forever. I take minutes to make even the simplest commit/checkout. In comparison, everything is instantaneous with SmartGit.

Also, there are loadings everywhere, all the time and lots of errors about git being busy with another process.

softelvdm July 16, 2017

Indeed. I went back to using 1.9 and things are working great...

It's a shame. This issue has been open for a long time. Bitbucket/Atlassian products are awesome. SourceTree 2.x sucks (right now).

Jérémie Faucher-Goulet August 4, 2017

Big Atlassian fan here... But at our company we've been forced to use other solutions because submodule don't play well anymore.

We've even bought a GitKraken license pack as SourceTree is now unusable. Every action takes upwards of 5-10 minutes to complete. So slow it literally is useless.

Some of my colleagues have elected to reverting back to an older version of SourceTree (1.9.5) to workaround all these issues. Others have even reverted to CLI only with gitk.

Wish I could use SourceTree... No other tools thus far as the same feature set, and is as usefull.

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Assimilater August 6, 2017

GitKraken has everything I'm aware of being in SourceTree's feature set. Only issue is I don't like that they charge a subscription where I don't see aded value year after year. They push too hard for selling tools that are in the domain of GitLab imho.

Jérémie Faucher-Goulet August 15, 2017

Lacking a lof of stuff that I use in SourceTree... And GitKraken still is very unstable (crashes, git corruption, failures to do simple operations). It is still a very new tool with all it's quirks that will get smoothed out over time (I hope).

But with all it's flaws, at least it's usable alongside the CLI. But would still prefer to use SourceTree.

Assimilater August 15, 2017

"Lacking a lot of stuff" like what? It handles submodules, remote tracking, fast forward, hunk and line staging really well. Git flow works well as well. What else does sourcetree have?

 

I've never had crashes with git kraken, the only issues I've had is in relation to direct authentication/integration with Github gitlab etc. But setup the remote of a repository and it's fine.

Jérémie Faucher-Goulet August 15, 2017

- Cannot discard changes on dirty submodules (even though the option is offered)

- Half the time, discarding changes on a submodule will fail.

- No automatic "git sumodule update --init --recursive" when checking out a different commit

- Very picky on checkout if there are unstaged changes, auto-stahsing will often fail. (I would prefer no auto-stashing thank you)

- Merge and fast-forward will often fail, have to issue "git merge" on the command line

- Corrupting my git index if I do an interactive rebase while GitKraken is still running in the background (some of the times)

- "git gc" starts to issue "Unlink of file xxxxx failed. Should I try again?" after a while. Perhaps due to corruption?

- Cannot multi-select files, then click "Stage changes". Have to do every files one-by-one

- Why, why why not provide the option of using "System Git"? Seems like it would solve many issues

- Switching between repoisotories takes more time because it needs to reload (vs Tabs in SourceTree)

- No visibility/distinction between author and commiter. Which am I shown?

- No visibility/distinction betwen authored and commited. Which am I shown?

- I have yet to understand how to select the remote to Push to when there is more than one.

- Cannot change the scope of the diff displayed, What if I want 20 lines around? All the file?

- You'll probably laugh at this one, but I've yet found a simple way to copy (put in the pastebin) the name of a branch for pasting elsewhere. Currently I have to "Alt+T" and copy the command invite from the bash console.

- Needs better integration with external diff tools.

- "git flow" support? I haven't seen the equivalent of "Start Feature", "Start Release", etc. that SourceTree has. Seems to be lacking too.

- I don't like the way branches are displayed, using an horizontal line instead of diagonal like a "Y". Seems like my eyes have to work harder to understand the graph.

- I could probably go on for a while still....

 ---------------

There are 2 thing I will applaud GitKraken for however, because it does better than SourceTree:

1. Squash. Just select commits and right-click. Now if only it would not fail for no apparent reasons some of the times...

2. LINUX SUPPORT!!!!

Pedro Moreira August 16, 2017

I agree that GitKraken has some bugs and misses some cool stuff that SourceTree has, but I can live with those.

What I can't live with are the seemingly random loadings on SourceTree that seem to fire either by just clicking anywhere or by a hidden timer. Those random loadings appear in every "box"  of the interface and each one of them take longer to process than anything GitKraken does - even switching repos.

Every program has its flaws, but at least in my real-life daily usage, SourceTree is the lease usable one and GitKraken is the, let's say, most comfortable one.

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Jérémie Faucher-Goulet August 16, 2017

Agreed! This is why I'm using it right now on day-to-day, even worth paying for it. In our shop, SourceTree has simply become unusable.

But if Atlassian manages to fix their performance issues, I'll switch back in a hearthbeath. I miss it.

Nelson Caballero-Olave August 15, 2017

I've the same problem and it was almost unusable, but I proceed with a clean install and import all my repositories from the cloud and now works at least at the same speed the 1.x version does.

Also, I did clean the Sourcetree dirs on my home dir on Windows, I don't know if that helps out too, but is working very nice now.

Good luck,

Nelson Caballero-Olave August 22, 2017

I have to change my opinion.

After a few days of use it started to behave like before, but even worse... I installed in a new PC to work.  Its even slower than the other PC I used before and have it installed before.

In this new PC, even I save my user/password, it keeps popping a windows to re-authenticate :-(  and it takes about 20 to 30 seconds each interaction with the application.  The app just updated today to 2.1.11.0 and its even worse I think.

Guess I'll revert back to 1.x releases.  At this moment 2.x is more or less useless.  Please Atlassian fix it, IMO was the best git client all-around.

Ciao,

Thomas Huijer August 15, 2017

Actually, I think the utter slowness of SourceTree 2.0 is wonderful, because it forced me to learn just about all the available git commandline options. Now I'm even faster than using SourceTree 1.x. ;-)

But seriously, the slowness is just killing my productivity. I've uninstalled 2.0. Unusable. Period.

joedoe August 25, 2017

understand you pretty well - as SourceTree is unusable now i switched to shell now knowing much more then simple 'git push' or 'git commit -m' commands

Mike Klein August 15, 2017

Another very unhappy user after 3-4 years being thrilled with the app.  The slowdown is at least 2 orders of magnitude.  I updated the embedded Git and clicked the "Disable LibGit2 integration" box in case.  Updating embedded Git helped (I had 2.8 previously), but not enough.  Now it's only about 1 order of magnitude slower than before.

It's absolutely awful and unusable as it is.  It's not an interactive tool anymore; it's batch.  Been struggling with it for a month or more, figuring updates would fix it, but nothing so far.

1.9.9.20 is a breath of fresh air in comparison, perfectly usable.

Windows 7 x64.

Oliver Gärtner August 18, 2017

I agree with the comments here. Sourcetree is a great app and 2.* is still working well on a Mac. On Windows however it is so slow that it basically became impossible to do work with it. A fix would be greatly appreciated.

Royd Amias August 21, 2017

I'm a Windows user and have hesitated to upgrade beyond Version 1.8.3.0. Everyone else on my team took the leap to 2.0+ and have regretted it. I kept the 1.8.3.0 around to fall back to just in case anyone else here needed it. Some did go back to that version while others went on to SmartGit.

RJ Bates August 24, 2017

I'm in the same boat as the rest of you. I loved sourcetree until v2 now it is a total waste of time. I use submodules and need multiple repos open at the same time. I can't take the slowness anymore! Please fix Atlassian! Why no comments from an Atlassian Team member on this issues?

douglascayers August 30, 2017

On Windows 10 x64 with SourceTree v2.1.11.0 I the app was slow for me too. Would take 3-5 seconds or more for SourceTree to scan and detect file changes even in small repos with only a hundred text files of 300 lines or less each. Trying to open another bookmarked repo would sometimes freeze the app entirely.

I then noticed that the embedded Git version was out of date so I updated it and after restarting SourceTree now everything is snappy again.

Coincidence or perhaps related to this conversation, worth a shot to make sure not only is SourceTree current but the embedded Git is current too.

Tools > Options > Git

2017-08-30_9-34-34.png

Henry Poyntz September 11, 2017

For anyone finding this thread - disable the libgit2 integration (using the checkbox you can see in the above post by Doug Ayers. This sped it up for me.

kijvyn September 12, 2017

I confirm, doing this makes a HUGE difference.

lpd September 18, 2017

Thank you so much, the startup seemed a little slower but I'm no longer twiddling my thumbs for 10s after every action.

Henry Poyntz October 12, 2017

It helped for a while, but I ended up buying GitKracken because it was still waaaaay to slow. https://www.gitkraken.com/

Doug Rosenfeld October 12, 2017

Here are a few tips that have gotten the insanely slow 2.0 working better for me on Windows 7:

  1. Use embedded Git (Tools > Options > Use Embedded Git)
  2. Disable LibGit2 integration (Tools > Options > Disable LibGit2 integration)
  3. Run SourceTree as Administrator

Hope this helps. 

Doug Rosenfeld October 12, 2017

Here is the official bug: SRCTREEWIN-7374

Marco Del Valle November 29, 2017

Two reasons why I won't be using Sourcetree anymore:

Can't add a new repository:

 nonresponsive.jpg

I spend most of my Git-Push time staring at spinning icons, "Loading" and "Not Responding":

 nonresponsive2.jpg

I've tried every solution suggested in this thread, and even started with a clean install (Including removing all settings files). Time to give GitKraken a shot.

Henry Poyntz November 29, 2017

I've been using GitKraken for the last two months now. You won't look back! haha.

Marco Del Valle November 29, 2017

So far so good! Got it up and running in less than 15 minutes, compared to 3 hours this morning and 1 hour last night trying to get SourceTree to push a 20-line commit.

It's a shame, because I was already used to the ST layout, but sometimes you have to learn to let go.

Sandip Kumar November 29, 2017

 I can comment on the time spent complain you have because of huge processing times

Change the following two settings and see huge improvement:

- Tools > Options > General > Repo Settings - Set the Log rows to fetch per load to "0"

- tools> options> git - check the checkbox for "Disable LibGit2 integration"

 

Problem solved.

Bradley_Newman February 27, 2018

Disabling LibGit2 integration broke the ability to open submodules... Experiencing all sorts of other problems with stalling, general bugs in the UI. Have to restart the app a lot after it gets stuck in a bad state. :/

using 2.4.8.0

lpd February 27, 2018
Bart Willemse May 10, 2018

My SourceTree 2.5.5 (running on Windows 10) was hanging for 10's of seconds at a time. I found that, in Tools -> Options -> Authentication, I still had an old account which was no longer valid (in addition to a valid one). I deleted the old account and this seemed to solve the SourceTree-hanging problem for me - I'm guessing that this was because SourceTree was trying to authenticate the old invalid account every time it needed to do something, and then hung due to a timeout each time?

SourceTree is unusable when working with Chromium project. I have single line changes in about 10 files. Just doing the most basic thing like viewing those changes causes ST to ramp up CPU usage to 100%. It takes multiple seconds to view another file diff. If I try to do things like reset hunk, or reset changes to an entire file (I have single line changes!), ST goes into overdrive again.

I won't even comment about what happens when trying to view commit history (just trying to see files changed in the last commit of a branch..)

ahmedalyasiri September 4, 2018

And it's still so so so so slow ok I had it bye bye source tree!!!

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Scott Micklethwaite November 12, 2018

Yeah I'm done with it as well. All the tips to switch to embedded git don't seem to apply to hg. The dev team doesn't seem invested in resolving this, only finding excuses and pretending like it isn't an issue.

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Roseanne Qiu October 9, 2019

Dear Sir/Madam:

I redownload sourcetree, since previous one keep crash. I use window 7 

but it does not work, it slow slow slow forever, I never could see the files.

attache file shows a circle running forever without any files showing up.

even I run the sourcetree on admin level.

would you please help?slownotwork.png

jcespinoza December 10, 2020

Wanted to add my two cents.

In case your Git commands through the UI take forever:

If you're using an external monitor and have an AMD graphics card, try disabling FreeSync while you're not gaming.

This took SourceTree from painfully slow to usable when making commits, switching branches, etc... But still, we're better off working with the command line...

 

Credits go to the anonymous hero that posted this somewhere else on this forum.

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