Google Now moving at a sloth's pace?

[Jonneh]

I understand that Google Now needs to load all the info for its cards when it first starts up, but I'm telling you, it is laggy/slow as crap during this...it takes way too long to load the cards for traffic and weather when you are first opening it up. Does anyone else have this problem? The way I've been trying to use Google Now goes like this:

I'll have my phone in my pocket, and realize I want to search for information about something. I had a friend in the middle of a trip to Japan recently and wanted to find out the time and date there, so I pulled out my phone and held the home button and moved it up to launch Google Now. That part was smooth and responsive. Then, the phone is suddenly completely unusable while Google Now attempts to load. In fact, even hitting the home button because I am frustrated with the slowness of it loading - does nothing for awhile! The phone practically freezes while simply trying to load Google Now. If, at this particular time, I am patient enough, I can wait for it to load and then I'll hit the voice button to avoid the hassle of typing my easy search query, "current time and date in Japan". But even hitting the voice button LAGS! So I hit it, mistakenly believe it's ready for me to speak (I know I know, I'm supposed to wait for the beep, but I forget that because the beep takes several seconds!), begin speaking and then of course it picks up in mid-sentence and messes the entire process up for me.

I could go on but it's just turning into a rant thread I guess. I really enjoy Google Now, and all other aspects of my phone are smooth and practically lag-free. Hell, even opening up the Google Maps application is a much smoother and quicker process than Google Now. Google Now is the ONLY "app" on my phone that is this ridiculously laggy and slow. After it's all settled in, it is smooth to scroll through it and all, but once I close it when I am finished with it and then attempt to bring it up again later in the day for another search query, it is the cycle all over again, slow as molasses.

I'm just curious to hear if anyone has a similar experience with Google Now, or if you have any solutions or advice, please let me know. I can't remember, but I feel like Google Now was a whole lot quicker before Jellybean 4.2.1. Was 4.1 quicker, or is my memory just foggy?

 

[craZDude]

I'm guessing you are stock on 4.2.1? I had major Google Now issues when I was using a custom ROM. I think I'm on 4.2 now, and mine opens pretty quickly now

If you have a custom recovery you could try wiping cache and dalvik cache, I suppose.

 

[Jonneh]

Thanks! Forgot to mention I'm actually on stock 4.2.1, and not rooted or anything, unfortunately. But let me know if you have any other ideas. I guess there's always a factory reset but I don't think I'm going to factory reset a perfectly-working phone set up completely how I like it, just to get Google Now to quit lagging like a tortoise, lol. Thanks for the reply!

 

[craZDude]

I don't have any more ideas, I couldn't be sure why it is running low, especially with you running stock. Perhaps someone else can give a suggestion?

 

[Dave_k605]

Try clearing just the app data/cache in manage apps

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Biggnaa20]

Google now has always been slow for me and usually takes about 10-15 seconds before the keyboard even pops up. It's changed my usage pattern in that I no longer search from the home screen. This is frustrating because I loved being able to do a quick search without waiting for an app to open.

nb

 

[joeynumbers]

I disabled Google now because of this. I don't think my lag was as bad as yours, but search is the primary feature I want and need from Google. I am not willing to sacrifice the speed of my search for info I can get from other apps by simply clicking them when I need it. No need to load a million sports scores and weather when I simply want to search. To be fair, I blame the 3g-4g carriers more than Google for the lag, as it runs much better over WiFi.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

 

[Jonneh]

I disabled Google now because of this. I don't think my lag was as bad as yours, but search is the primary feature I want and need from Google. I am not willing to sacrifice the speed of my search for info I can get from other apps by simply clicking them when I need it. No need to load a million sports scores and weather when I simply want to search. To be fair, I blame the 3g-4g carriers more than Google for the lag, as it runs much better over WiFi.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

Yeah, I hear ya. The speed is quicker on wifi. I guess LTE would be different too, though the phone's not capable of it unfortunately. AT&T's HSPA is plenty fast for me for most other tasks, but for some unknown reason Google Now just sucks with it. The thing that strikes me is it's usually only loading 3 cards, sometimes a mere 2 (traffic to work/home, and weather)! For it to be slowing down my simple searches this much is getting ridiculous.

As for everyone else's replies, it's good to hear I'm not alone here. I guess I will go into nova's settings and un-hide the google search bar on the home screen or something, if clearing its cache doesn't work.

Try clearing just the app data/cache in manage apps

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

Will do that now, thanks for the idea!

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Android Central Forums