VirtualizedList: You have a large list that is slow to update

Question

I use FlatList with large number of items. I get following alert from Expo XDE.

VirtualizedList: You have a large list that is slow to update - make sure your renderItem function renders components that follow React performance best practices like PureComponent, shouldComponentUpdate, etc. {"dt":13861,"prevDt":1498372326027,"contentLength":6624}

I used some optimization approaches to my FlatList for example PureComponent, but I still get this alert. Before I will describe my optimizations, could you tell me if this alert appears always even though FlatList is optimized? Or maybe it indicated actual issues with performance? I ask because performance of my FlatList is good.

Answer 1

I was previously seeing this error. After optimizing my code, I no longer see it. I figured out the problem by adding console.log() statement to the render() function of the Component that creates the FlatList, and the function that renders each item in the List. I noticed that my code was previously re-rendering the entire FlatList and all its items whenever there's a state change to any component on that page (even a component that's not related to the FlatList). I fixed this by converting various components to PureComponents. Here's what my FlatList declaration looks like:

<FlatList
    ref={(ref) => { this.flatListRef = ref; }}
    data={allPosts}
    initialNumToRender={7}
    renderItem={({ item }) =>
      <Post postJson={item} isGroupAdmin={isGroupAdmin} user={user} />
    }
  />

Notice that I'm returning <Post /> which is a pure component:

import React, { PureComponent } from 'react';
class Post extends PureComponent {

  render() { ... }
}

This ensures that the FlatList re-renders a only if the post changes. When I was previously passing a normal function to renderItem i.e., a function that does something like this:

return (
  <View>
  ...
  </View>
);

I noticed that the FlatList was re-rendering all items whenever any item changed. Now, by using a PureComponent, the FlatList only renders the new item added to the list (if the list is already being displayed).

It still takes relative long to render the entire list the first time. However, initialNumToRender ensures that the screen is filled up pretty much instantaneously (while the remain items get rendered in the background). And more importantly, after that initial rendering, the FlatList only ever has to render one item at a time (the item that changes).

I found this post very helpful).

I've just realized this is also explained here

Answer 2

I noticed that the answer to this question dosen't proffer solution for those using functional component and hooks. I encountered this problem and i was able to get rid of it by using the hook "useMemo()"

<FlatList
                keyExtractor={keyExtractor}
                data={productsState.products}
                renderItem={renderItem}
            />
const renderItem = ({ item }) => (
            <ListItem
                title={item.ProductName}
                subtitle={(item.ProductQuantity) + " " + (item.QuantityType !== 
                null ? item.QuantityType : " ") }
                bottomDivider
                topDivider
                chevron
                checkmark={checkMark}
                onLongPress={() => setCheckMark(!checkMark)}
                rightSubtitle={(item.Currency !== null ? item.Currency: " " ) + 
                " " + (item.productCost !== null ? item.productCost: " " )}
                rightSubtitleStyle={{ marginTop: -20 }}
                badge={{ value: item.sellingPrice, textStyle: { color: 'orange' }, containerStyle: { marginTop: -20 } }}
            />
        )

The renderItem function is an expensive computation, because it a long list to render. Instead I memoize it as follows

            const memoizedValue = useMemo(() => renderItem, [productsState.product]);

<FlatList
                keyExtractor={keyExtractor}
                data={productsState.products}
                renderItem={memoizedValue}
            />
const renderItem = ({ item }) => (
        <ListItem
            title={item.ProductName}
            subtitle={(item.ProductQuantity) + " " + (item.QuantityType !== 
            null ? item.QuantityType : " ") }
            bottomDivider
            topDivider
            chevron
            checkmark={checkMark}
            onLongPress={() => setCheckMark(!checkMark)}
            rightSubtitle={(item.Currency !== null ? item.Currency: " " ) + 
            " " + (item.productCost !== null ? item.productCost: " " )}
            rightSubtitleStyle={{ marginTop: -20 }}
            badge={{ value: item.sellingPrice, textStyle: { color: 'orange' }, containerStyle: { marginTop: -20 } }}
        />
    )

Don't forget to import useMemo from react, inorder to make this work.

Good Luck!

Answer 3

If you are using a functional component, wrapping the component in memo is a good way to prevent unnecessary renders without going through the hassle of converting a functional component to a pure class component. This post explains it more

follow this example:

In the parent component:

import React from 'react';
import {FlatList} from 'react-native';
import PostCard from './PostCard';

export const NewsFeeds = props => {
      return (
        <FlatList
          data={data}
          initialNumToRender={4}
          refreshing={loading}
          renderItem={_renderitem}
        />
      );
    };

const _renderitem = ({item}) => <PostCard item={item} />;

In the child component

import React, {memo} from 'react';
import {View} from 'react-native';

const PostCard = (props) => {
        return (
            <View>
    
            </View>
        );
    };
    
 export default memo(PostCard);

If you are using a class component, make sure your component is a pure component by extending React. PureComponent in your class definition

class NewsFeeds extends React.PureComponent {
  render() {
    return (
      <FlatList
          data={data}
          initialNumToRender={4}
          refreshing={loading}
          renderItem={_renderitem}
      />
    )
  }
}

Answer 4

Adding this prop :

initialNumToRender={n} 

worked for me (n being a considerably short amount, for example 5).

Answer 5

I figured it out, why this bug is happened. The main problem is, when your onEndReached event is happened, im sure you are loading something from server, which means, you need to wait until your loading is finished from server, so after that you can call onEndReached event.

But in your case there is multilple calling of onEndReached event. So when it happens, your application was trying to load datas from server again and again.

Ok, how to solve this problem: you need to create new state, for example this is realization of infinite scrolling by pagination.

const [loader, setLoader] = useState<boolean>(false);

const onEndReached = (page) => {
  if (next && !loader) {
    setPage(page + 1)
  }
}

const loadData = async () => {
  setLoader(true);
  const resp = await getData();
  setLoader(false);
}

<FlatList ...someprops onEndReached={onEndReached} />

Answer 6

Also make sure, you don't encapsulate FlatList with SourceList. For me it accidentally appears, because I used native-base, and didn't noticed, that their Component <Content> replace ScrollList.

For more Information see here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/54512633/1256697

Answer 7

On top of all the answers given, you can also try setting removeClippedSubviews to true.

<FlatList
  removeClippedSubviews

  // ...other props
/>

By enabling removeClippedSubviews the memory is freed up when an item disappears from the view. When you have a long and complex list (i.e. a list of cards) the DOM of each card can get pretty large so it's best to free up the memory when it's not visible.

In addition if you combine with useCallback() rather than useMemo() you free up a bit more memory when your "data" changes

const renderItem = useCallback(originalRenderItem, [data])

the useMemo() approach will memoize based on the value, but it should really free itself up when the data changes. By doing useCallback() you're getting the benefit of using the "function as a parameter" so you don't need to

const renderItem = useCallback(({item, index} 
  => originalRenderItem({item, index}), [data])

Thus making it look like a wrapped function without as much reading for the next person.

Doing this two:

• prevents the calling the potentially expensive render() function of recently updated components.
• reduces memory used by invisible components
• frees up the memoized data if data changes sooner.

Answer 8

add memo to your renderItem component when export it

import React,{memo} from "react"; . . . your code . . . export default memo(your component name);