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Two bugs and a "happy ending", Dramatic speed increase after clearing $CEF$ browser cache
 
#1
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I'd like to share my experiences from yesterday and today which could be helpful. First, I found two bugs in v11.5.1.1 which were not there in 11.4.3:

1. The font size for the Plain Text editor is stuck to a pretty high value (looks like 12 or 14), and does not react to font size settings in Preferences -> Viewer/Editor -> Profile Layout. It seems to also affect the Quick Reply field, at least in the classic preview pane. The Rich Text and PureHTML editors look to be unaffected.

2. Message tag colors are not displayed in the pop-up menu when the Tags column is clicked for a message in the message list, making some tags invisible and the whole thing hard to use.

Since I use the plain text editor and message tags extensively in my daily routine, I rolled back to v11.4.3, after which TB would crash on startup. This I solved by deleting the $cef$ folder in TB's application data.

Which led to a happy realization: all slowdowns I was experiencing when opening folders, viewing messages, etc. are now "magically" gone. Over the years my $cef$ folder grew to ~150MB, and it is evident that cache data stored there was dragging TB down.

I reported all this to support through three tickets: two bug reports and one a feature request to add some kind of "Clear CEF browser cache" operation to TB.

(v11.5.1.1 32-bit -> v11.4.3 64-bit, Windows 10 22H2)

PS. A side-effect of introducing the new option "Default window font size" is that the folder tree and message list are more compact than before (both when "denser display" is selected in Other options, and not). On the one hand, more folders/messages can fit now, but on the other hand I find the new look more cluttered in the denser display.
 
 
 
#2
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>> 2. Message tag colors are not displayed in the pop-up menu when the Tags column is clicked for a message in the message list, making some tags invisible and the whole thing hard to use.
Yep, that bug is here. But not so stressful for me. Messages shows right with color tegs in the message list.
Модератор. Не являюсь сотрудником RitLabs (I'm not an employee of Ritlabs).
https://belrus.biz/vendors/ritlabs.html — Официальный дистрибьютор The Bat! в России
 
 
 
#3
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Quote
George Salnik wrote:
Yep, that bug is here. But not so stressful for me. Messages shows right with color tegs in the message list.

Yes, the tag colors are displayed correctly everywhere else.

To be clear, if one is regularly using an HTML editor and not using tags (or using them sporadically), the two bugs may not be a "deal-breaker" like they were for me. I expect them to be fixed eventually.

What I find most significant in this exercise is the CEF browser cache effect on TB. The whole point of caches is to speed things up, and the complete opposite is happening here. It is mind-blowing how much faster and more responsive TB has become after deleting all that cache. Just like in the "good old days".
Edited: Miloš Radovanović - 09 December 2025 10:26:05
 
 
 
#4
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Interesting, and thanks for your submissions to the developers!

I've added a description to your message in hopes that others will note the opportunity to increase The Bat's speed.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#5
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It only worked for one day for me.  Now on each start it tries to open Chrome for some reason.  GMail does not retrieve any mail but all my other POP accounts do.  But no preview or normal view is possible with any email.


https://app.screencast.com/MFD8Jb8CBKW2W

<update>

Fixed - for now.  Remembered to check something from YEARS ago.  Noticed a half-dozen instances of The Bat! running.  Killed them one-by-one.  Now EVERYTHING is back to normal.  For now I'll check running processes after exiting at EOD to see if it's persistent.  
Edited: fletch - 09 December 2025 17:54:57
 
 
 
#6
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Quote
fletch wrote:
Fixed - for now.  Remembered to check something from YEARS ago.  Noticed a half-dozen instances of The Bat! running.  Killed them one-by-one.  Now EVERYTHING is back to normal.  For now I'll check running processes after exiting at EOD to see if it's persistent.  

Unfortunately, that's been an issue pretty much after CEF was introduced - CEF processes not being closed after closing TB and needing to be killed manually. Some versions of TB have been worse than others in this regard, sometimes resulting in "Chrome" getting opened. 11.4.3 has been pretty good, but occasionally I still need to do that.
 
 
 
#7
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FYI -- Win 10

Quote
- CEF processes not being closed after closing TB and needing to be killed manually

I've never had to deal with this.  Upgraded this morning, everything was fine until I went out for a few hours and didn't get any mail.  Restarted still no mail.

While dealing with my webhost I found the posts here.

I had numerous processes running 2-4 instances, nothing I recognized as TB, but manually killing fixed pop mail.
 
 
 
#8
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Christine Baker wrote:
I've never had to deal with this.

You were lucky, or simply unaware. The processes get killed on Windows restart anyway.

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Christine Baker wrote:
I had numerous processes running 2-4 instances, nothing I recognized as TB, but manually killing fixed pop mail.

For me they are always identifiable as TB, icon and program name, among the background processes in the Task Manager after TB is closed. Usually 4-6 of them.
 
 
 
#9
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Quote
Miloš Radovanović wrote:
This I solved by deleting the $cef$ folder in TB's application data.

Which led to a happy realization: all slowdowns I was experiencing when opening folders, viewing messages, etc. are now "magically" gone. Over the years my $cef$ folder grew to ~150MB, and it is evident that cache data stored there was dragging TB down.
Great finding Milos. Many thanks for posting this. This solved my anoying problem with slowing down TB more and more since ~V11.2. My §cef§ folder was 1.4GB!!.  
Edited: Markus - 12 December 2025 11:55:38
 
 
 
#10
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Quote
Markus wrote:
My §cef§ folder was 1.4GB!!

Whoa! I was feeling the slowdowns with my measly 150MB. I can only imagine your pain...
 
 
 
#11
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Update: support reproduced and confirmed both bugs, and noted the feature request for clearing CEF browser cache.

For the font size bug they offered a workaround: "You can try the following: disable the display of Quick Reply, restart The Bat! and change the font size for Regular Text, the setting should be applied properly." Tried it, worked.

EDIT: However, when I reenable Quick Reply, the font size changes back to the large one.
Edited: Miloš Radovanović - 14 December 2025 18:48:53
 
 
 
#12
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my $cef$ folder grew to ~150MB, and it is evident that cache data stored there was dragging TB down.


Interesting. My $cef$ folder is 424MB, 1838 files, 262 folders. If TB ran any faster, I'd have to put in lightning arresters. Clearly the problems observed are not just due to the size of the folder, but something about the structure or the data therein, which varies based on user activity.
 
 
 
#13
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Edward Reid wrote:
If TB ran any faster, I'd have to put in lightning arresters.

Ha! Good one. OTOH, filters can be excruciatingly slow if you have many of them and/or large ones (with a lot of conditions). But this is solely down to TB.

Quote
Edward Reid wrote:
Clearly the problems observed are not just due to the size of the folder, but something about the structure or the data therein, which varies based on user activity.

Agreed. Mine is now up to almost 100 MB (started at 6), with no slowdowns detected. Changing CEF versions may have something to do with it as well. It can even crash TB when you downgrade, as I described above.
 
 
 
#14
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Update 2: both bugs were not fixed in v11.5.2 Christmas Edition which dropped today.
 
 
 
#15
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Update 3: both bugs were not fixed in v12.0...
 
 
 
#16
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Hello if I delete the CEF folder that is at C:\Users\Myname\AppData\Local\The Bat!\CEF   I have an error message at start up saying a lot of dll are missing


Fortunately I only renamed it as old and not really deleted

Any idea?
Edited: duralux duralux - 02 January 2026 12:11:41
 
 
 
#17
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Quote
duralux duralux wrote:
Hello if I delete the CEF folder that is at C:\Users\Myname\AppData\Local\The Bat!\CEF   I have an error message at start up saying a lot of dll are missing


Fortunately I only renamed it as old and not really deleted

Any idea?

No no no, not that one! :o

That is the CEF folder fr om The Bat! installation directory, do not touch it.

The folder in question is named $cef$ (with dollar signs around, lowercase letters), and is in the folder wh ere your account data is stored.
 
 
 
#18
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Quote
Miloš Radovanović wrote:
2. Message tag colors are not displayed in the pop-up menu when the Tags column is clicked for a message in the message list, making some tags invisible and the whole thing hard to use.

12-0-0-1 beta is fixed. Test it.
Модератор. Не являюсь сотрудником RitLabs (I'm not an employee of Ritlabs).
https://belrus.biz/vendors/ritlabs.html — Официальный дистрибьютор The Bat! в России
 
 
 
#19
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Quote
George Salnik wrote:
12-0-0-1 beta is fixed. Test it.

Sir yes sir!

Indeed, the two bugs seem to be fixed in this version, along with a few others.
 
 
 
#20
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I'm glad that you are glad ))
Модератор. Не являюсь сотрудником RitLabs (I'm not an employee of Ritlabs).
https://belrus.biz/vendors/ritlabs.html — Официальный дистрибьютор The Bat! в России
 
 
 
#21
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TB v12.0.2 just dropped, and it incorporates the fixes for the two bugs.

Also, I noticed there was a "silent update" of v11 four days ago - v11.5.3: https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/archive-versions.php which probably includes those fixes, too.
 
 
 
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