Too Many Custom Studies Slows Down ThinkOrSwim

[Jman831]

It has taken me my whole ThinkScript "career" (don't take me too seriously) to finally figure out why my OnDemand feature for ThinkOrSwim would not perform well. I don't know if this has been talked about in other threads, but I couldn't find any threads on the subject. I'm going to do a little showing off here while at the same time making fun of myself for how many User-Defined ThinkScript indicators I've created. The image of the Bing/Copilot answer is the point that I'm trying to make. Remove unused User-Defined indicators that are no longer serving any purpose as they can slow down the OnDemand feature along with the use of ThinkOrSwim for real-time trading tremendously. As you can see, I have quite a bit of work cut out for me as I'll be going through all of my User-Defined indicators to determine what might be important to keep and what might not. I honestly think I have more (embarrassingly so) User-Defined indicators than I do indicators that actually came with the program. I honestly don't even remember what half of the indicators are. Lol. Maybe this is common sense to a lot of you, but for people like me I somehow missed this tidbit of information the entire time I've been using ThinkOrSwim.

Edit: I would also like to apologize to those I never bothered to answer questions or make a fix for. I suffer from mental illness and often times will go on long hiatus stretches where I stop practice trading/trading altogether. I would also like to mention that sometimes I don't always have an answer or a fix to all questions, so please bare with me. Thank you kindly for your understanding.

Second Edit: The same also goes for custom Strategies.

 

[MerryDay]

It is vital to maintain a minimal number of Custom scripts, workspaces, styles, and grids.
Keeping unused customizations in the ThinkorSwim app will slow it down.
Our customizations are not indexed on Schwab's servers.
Therefore, the more you have, exponentially creates lag to access the ones that you use.
Copy unused custom studies to your computer, then delete them from your app
https://usethinkscript.com/threads/how-to-backup-user-created-tos-chart-studies-strategies.14979/
https://usethinkscript.com/threads/best-way-to-save-lines-of-code.14973/#post-122479

Delete unused styles, grids and workspaces.

I feel your pain. I, too, learned this the hard way.
https://usethinkscript.com/threads/transferring-thinkorswim-data-to-new-account.18002/#post-138268


PS: You are one of my favorite contributors! I find tidbits of genius in every code that you create.
Your insights have helped me grow as a trader and as a scripter.
Your contributions are greatly appreciated.

For anyone who has missed out on @Jman831's scripts. Here they are sorted by popularity:
https://usethinkscript.com/search/1...[title_only]=1&c[users]=Jman831&o=replies&g=1

 

[Jman831]

I feel your pain. I, too, learned this the hard way.
https://usethinkscript.com/threads/transferring-thinkorswim-data-to-new-account.18002/#post-138268


It is vital to maintain a minimal number of Custom Scripts
Keeping unused custom indicators in the ThinkorSwim app will slow it down.
Our custom studies are not indexed on Schwab's servers.
Therefore, the more you have, exponentially creates lag to access the ones that you use.
Copy unused custom studies to your computer then delete them from your app
https://usethinkscript.com/threads/best-way-to-save-lines-of-code.14973/#post-122479

At least now we can laugh about it. Good suggestion, by the way, I wasn't even thinking about that! Some that I posted on here strangely went missing from ThinkOrSwim, but I'm not worried about it since I have them posted on here.

 

[MerryDay]

You are correct!
Sharing our custom indicators and setups here on the forum, provides us with the best backup system available.

Example:
We have not had too many corrections in this hot market.
When the Aug-Sept'23 and the Feb'24 corrections hit, I did not have any of my setups for analyzing the dip on my rigs.

But it was simple to search the forum, to call up my Buy The Dip scenarios ,as well as let me review what everyone else was doing.

Also, I am always fiddling with my code. Sometimes with disasterous results.
But I can also get back to a clean version by re-loading what I had shared on the forum.

 

[Ryguy]

It has taken me my whole ThinkScript "career" (don't take me too seriously) to finally figure out why my OnDemand feature for ThinkOrSwim would not perform well. I don't know if this has been talked about in other threads, but I couldn't find any threads on the subject. I'm going to do a little showing off here while at the same time making fun of myself for how many User-Defined ThinkScript indicators I've created. The image of the Bing/Copilot answer is the point that I'm trying to make. Remove unused User-Defined indicators that are no longer serving any purpose as they can slow down the OnDemand feature along with the use of ThinkOrSwim for real-time trading tremendously. As you can see, I have quite a bit of work cut out for me as I'll be going through all of my User-Defined indicators to determine what might be important to keep and what might not. I honestly think I have more (embarrassingly so) User-Defined indicators than I do indicators that actually came with the program. I honestly don't even remember what half of the indicators are. Lol. Maybe this is common sense to a lot of you, but for people like me I somehow missed this tidbit of information the entire time I've been using ThinkOrSwim.

Edit: I would also like to apologize to those I never bothered to answer questions or make a fix for. I suffer from mental illness and often times will go on long hiatus stretches where I stop practice trading/trading altogether. I would also like to mention that sometimes I don't always have an answer or a fix to all questions, so please bare with me. Thank you kindly for your understanding.

Second Edit: The same also goes for custom Strategies.
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I too am in a similar boat. You aren't alone. In fact, everytime I go to delete a custom indicator, tos completely freezes for at least 10 minutes, sometimes longer. It actually demotivated me to go back and delete everything. This is considering that I'm ready to delete most of the indicators that I have as I am now becoming much more profitable. Im so focused on getting things done that Ive completely slowed down tos for myself which is my fault. However I had to learn all of this on my own. I had to actually move my funds to interactive brokers because I cant work on tos anymore.

In other words, if anyone knows a much more efficient way to mass delete/delete multiple studies at once it would be a huge help.

 

[useThinkScript]

I too am in a similar boat. You aren't alone. In fact, everytime I go to delete a custom indicator, tos completely freezes for at least 10 minutes, sometimes longer. It actually demotivated me to go back and delete everything. This is considering that I'm ready to delete most of the indicators that I have as I am now becoming much more profitable. Im so focused on getting things done that Ive completely slowed down tos for myself which is my fault. However I had to learn all of this on my own. I had to actually move my funds to interactive brokers because I cant work on tos anymore.

In other words, if anyone knows a much more efficient way to mass delete/delete multiple studies at once it would be a huge help.

Yes, you can delete a massive number of indicators in a single pass.
Put your cursor on the first indicator to be deleted.
Hold the shift key and press the down arrow.
Color all those indicators and hit delete.

If, instead, you want to pick and choose which indicators to delete:
Hold the control key and left-click on each indicator to be deleted.

FYI, if you have accumulated a lot of studies, deleting them is going to take a significant amount of time. The custom studies are NOT indexed! So, plan this action to occur, NOT during market hours.

Hit delete.
Go out to dinner, go take the dog for a LONG walk. Or several long walks!
The delete action will complete eventually.
You will see a significant performance increase, once they are gone.

Indicators that are currently in use on charts will not delete.
Everything else will.

FYI, if you have thousands of indicators, consider deleting in batches of 200-300 indicators at a time.
Do this over, multiple days.

Afterward, install a new version of ToS, to remove any residual problems.
Actually, I do a new clean install a few times a year.

 

[Splinter]

This is pretty huge, thank you for the info. I'm curious if there was a distinct difference in performance when these unused scripts are deleted from the platform.

 

[MerryDay]

This is pretty huge, thank you for the info. I'm curious if there was a distinct difference in performance when these unused scripts are deleted from the platform.

I upgraded rigs, graphics cards, memory, and internet speeds. But as ToS is single-threaded and most of the data is kept on Schwab servers, none of it made a huge difference.

The only big improvement in speed came from reducing the number of custom studies in my library.

Caveat:
If your workspace has 6 or more charts open and are running complex scripts; you should consider opening multiple ToS instances and/or running multiple rigs.
https://usethinkscript.com/threads/...ple-windows-computers.4120/page-2#post-143018

 

[Jman831]

This is pretty huge, thank you for the info. I'm curious if there was a distinct difference in performance when these unused scripts are deleted from the platform.

There certainly was for me, but mainly for the OnDemand feature. I don't do a lot of actual trading these days, I mostly like to experiment with practice trading for fun and to explore new indicator and strategy ideas. When I'd have open positions in OnDemand, it would often take a long time for my positions to show a change in P&L and sometimes it would just get stuck and not show any changes in P&L despite price changes on the chart.

 

[Ryguy]

There certainly was for me, but mainly for the OnDemand feature. I don't do a lot of actual trading these days, I mostly like to experiment with practice trading for fun and to explore new indicator and strategy ideas. When I'd have open positions in OnDemand, it would often take a long time for my positions to show a change in P&L and sometimes it would just get stuck and not show any changes in P&L despite price changes on the chart.

I have the exact same issue. I'm still working on deleting all the ones I don't need. Sounds odd, but some of them I do need. I have noticed a huge difference in how it's performing. It is quite a bit smoother for sure.

 

[Abutterfly]

Wow. Found this by luck.. Never thought this will slow down my computer...... WIll keep this in mind about identifying, backing up, and deleting unused indicators

 

[autoloader]

Do saved study sets cause the same slowing? I've got a bunch of those.

 

[Jman831]

Wow. Found this by luck.. Never thought this will slow down my computer...... WIll keep this in mind about identifying, backing up, and deleting unused indicators

I mean I don't know if anyone has had issues with it slowing down their actual computer, but it definitely does bog down thinkorswim, in my experience.

 

[Jman831]

Do saved study sets cause the same slowing? I've got a bunch of those.

I've never looked into it but I imagine if custom studies can slow it down, I don't doubt things like study sets could do the same in excess. I'm not exactly the most diligent guy when it comes to keeping my custom settings maintained myself but it's probably best practices to try to keep an efficient setup that isn't loaded with many different unused settings and indicators. When I initially backed up and deleted my indicators, it made a significant difference in performance when backtesting with the OnDemand feature. Just my two cents.