Improve App Responsiveness with Optional Automatic Deletion of Older Schedule History

Hey Luke,

Hope you’re well!

Previously, when I encountered an issue with the encryption feature, you mentioned that it might be related to the unusually large size of my account, which had over 10,000 records at the time, and that it made the encryption take longer than usual. That made me wonder whether the size of my account might also be contributing to some of the lag I continue to experience.

I recently noticed that one of the latest updates included an improvement described as “Smoother scrolling and fewer pauses, even with thousands of tasks or long schedule history.” I’m glad to see improvements like this being made, and I hope they continue!

That said, my account is still fairly laggy, despite these improvements. While I’m optimistic that the responsiveness and smoothness of larger accounts will continue to improve over time, I’m wondering whether there might be a relatively simple workaround in the meantime.

Would it be possible to introduce an optional setting that allows users to delete schedule events older than a specified period, such as one month or one year?

For example, a user could choose to retain all future events and the past month of schedule history, while deleting anything older. For users with particularly large accounts, this could potentially remove hundreds or even thousands of older events, reducing the amount of data the app needs to manage and hopefully improving its overall responsiveness.

Ideally, the setting could allow users to either delete older events once or enable automatic deletion going forward. It could also prompt users to create a backup of their data through the app before enabling the feature for the first time, to avoid accidentally losing important information.

Of course, I’m not sure whether reducing the number of historical schedule events would actually improve performance, or whether the lag is primarily caused by something else. I’m also curious how recurring events without an end date are handled, particularly whether their past occurrences accumulate as individual records over time and contribute to the size of an account. If so, I wonder whether deleting those older occurrences, while preserving the recurring schedules and all future events, could make a meaningful difference. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this from a technical standpoint.

Ultimately, I would love to be able to retain my entire schedule history, and I’m optimistic that TimeFinder will eventually reach a point where there’s essentially no difference in performance between large and small accounts. However, in the meantime, I think an optional feature like this could be a useful workaround for users with particularly large accounts who would be willing to sacrifice some older schedule history in exchange for potentially better performance.

I’d certainly be eager to try it myself and see whether it produces a noticeable improvement in smoothness and responsiveness.

Thanks for considering it, and for all the work you continue to put into TimeFinder!