Improve performance of hotkey

[Gr3q]

Description

albert show takes longer to show albert since the last rewrite. I consistently type one character before albert shows after I hit the keybinding. My speed is all muscle memory so I know albert was shown faster before. This happens on all of my machines.

Expected behavior

To show albert faster.

Steps to reproduce

1. Use keybinding or something else for albert show
2. start typing

Source

AUR/built from source

Debug output

timing albert show:

time albert show
11:02:42 [warn:qt.gui.icc] fromIccProfile: failed size sanity 2
Albert set visible.

________________________________________________________
Executed in  223.53 millis    fish           external
   usr time  181.52 millis  261.00 micros  181.26 millis
   sys time   33.25 millis  115.00 micros   33.13 millis

        Albert version: 0.20.13
            Build date: Apr 24 2023 16:34:27
            Qt version: 6.5.0
             Build ABI: x86_64-little_endian-lp64
  Arch (build/current): x86_64/x86_64
 Kernel (type/version): linux/6.2.13-arch1-1
                    OS: Arch Linux
     OS (type/version): arch/unknown
 $QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME: qgnomeplatform
         Platform name: xcb
                  Font: Fira Sans,10,-1,5,400,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1
       Binary location: /usr/bin/albert
                  $PWD: /home/gr3q
                $SHELL: /usr/bin/fish
                 $LANG: en_GB.UTF-8
              Language: English
                Locale: en_US
     $XDG_SESSION_TYPE: x11
  $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP: X-Cinnamon
      $DESKTOP_SESSION: cinnamon
  $XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP: cinnamon
            Icon theme: ePapirus

[ManuelSchneid3r]

You are using x11 why dont you use the native hotkey? albert show is just a workaround for wayland platforms.

[Gr3q]

I can't set the native hotkey to only the Meta key, so I set the keybinding via Cinnamon.

[ManuelSchneid3r]

You could use netcat to pipe show into the albert socket in your cache dir. nc should be way faster than the albert IPC

echo -n toggle | nc -U $HOME/.cache/albert_socket
# since 0.21
echo -n toggle | nc -U $HOME/.cache/albert/ipc_socket

Some details

manuel::mint ~ /usr/bin/time -v sh -c 'echo -n toggle | nc -U $HOME/.cache/albert_socket'
Albert visibility toggled.	Command being timed: "sh -c echo -n toggle | nc -U $HOME/.cache/albert_socket"
	User time (seconds): 0.00
	System time (seconds): 0.00
	Percent of CPU this job got: 50%
	Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:00.00
	Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
	Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
	Average stack size (kbytes): 0
	Average total size (kbytes): 0
	Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 1752
	Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
	Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 0
	Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 221
	Voluntary context switches: 6
	Involuntary context switches: 0
	Swaps: 0
	File system inputs: 0
	File system outputs: 0
	Socket messages sent: 0
	Socket messages received: 0
	Signals delivered: 0
	Page size (bytes): 4096
	Exit status: 0
manuel::mint ~ /usr/bin/time -v sh -c 'albert show'                                                
Albert set visible.
	Command being timed: "sh -c albert show"
	User time (seconds): 0.04
	System time (seconds): 0.03
	Percent of CPU this job got: 92%
	Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:00.08
	Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
	Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
	Average stack size (kbytes): 0
	Average total size (kbytes): 0
	Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 45128
	Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
	Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 0
	Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 3091
	Voluntary context switches: 286
	Involuntary context switches: 13
	Swaps: 0
	File system inputs: 0
	File system outputs: 0
	Socket messages sent: 0
	Socket messages received: 0
	Signals delivered: 0
	Page size (bytes): 4096
	Exit status: 0

[Gr3q]

Thanks, it works well. Is this going to be provided later as a separate command instead of albert show for users or will I need to do the same in the future?

Also, is it not echo -n toggle | nc -U "${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/albert_socket"?

[ManuelSchneid3r]

Is this going to be provided later as a separate command instead of albert show for users or will I need to do the same in the future?

What do you mean by add?

[Gr3q]

Basically what I did is that I added a script with the command as ~/.local/bin/albertshow and I used that in Cinnamon keybinding settings. Technically it's not needed because I could've used bash -c 'echo -n toggle | nc -U $HOME/.cache/albert_socket' (Piping doesn't work directly in Cinnamon shortcut editor), but I thought it's cleaner for me.

What I ask that albert show is clearly inferior to just calling the socket, is it possible to use that when someone calls albert show? I know albert is the launcher itself, that's why it takes time to invoke it, maybe with a wrapper script (which I usually hate to do)?

Anyway, my question is, do I have to do this extra setup for myself on all my machines to get an actual performant toggling (when I can't use the built-in keybinding, which is always) or is it going to get fixed in the future so I don't have to do any of this?

[ManuelSchneid3r]

I dont think its worth it. This is a niche case (modonly hotkey and Wayland). It will never work with Albert itself, since the linker is invoked before running the app. The only solution is a bootstrapper then. We could also ship some albertctl program as we had some months ago. As a script it would introduce the NC dependency 99,9 of users won't really benefit. as an executable it has to be maintained (macos?). I am not even sure if it would be faster since it still requires Qt libs.

[ManuelSchneid3r]

do I have to do this extra setup

sure the line sh -c 'echo -n toggle | nc -U $HOME/.cache/albert_socket' is slightly more involved than albert toggle but its not really a dealbreaker. its not that much work relative to the total amount of time you have to invest to setup your custom hotkey. imho it makes no sense to have this trade off for a lot of maintenance work.