Scratch performs terribly on mobile devices and I’m tired of it. Will this ever get fixed or does Scratch Team not care?

MathCookie

This has been a problem ever since Scratch 3.0 released. It’s gotten slightly better over time, but performance is still leagues worse than what it should be. I wish this was a higher priority issue, but it’s just kept being like this, and at this point unless someone brings it up I don’t think anything’s going to be done about it. Most of my projects are apparently too big to run on mobile devices, as whenever I try to play one of my larger ones (such as my newest game, Greyscale Wormhole Operator) on a mobile device, Scratch crashes before it can even load the game. Even for my smaller projects, once the game is loaded, it will still crash if played for long enough, and the time it takes to crash is random (though obviously it’s most likely to crash whenever a significant change happens, such as a round of a dodging game ending and the game going to the results screen). And as of a few days ago, not only have the crashes started happening more often, but as the game loads, the website background goes black. It would be appreciated to have a reliable way to play the games I spent weeks (or even months in a couple cases) making on a device I can really enjoy playing them on (I own a computer which I use to make the projects, but keyboard controls have always felt clunky for me, plus my computer’s way too large to be portable), but at the moment that simply isn’t an option. Please, look into improving performance on mobile devices if possible. These devices can easily run apps in the hundreds of megabytes, why does a 5 MB Scratch project crash every time?

For the record, my mobile device is an iPad. If I had an Android tablet I’d just install the Scratch app, but I can’t do that on iPad. I’m not blaming Scratch Team for that, I’m aware that there’s no Scratch app on iOS because Apple didn’t allow it. What I’m asking for is a performance fix/increase on running a Scratch project in the browser on a mobile device. If any of you guys have an idea on how I could do that more efficiently (TurboWarp has these crashing issues too, though they only trigger on larger projects, so please don’t suggest that) then feel free to tell me here, I’d appreciate it.

dhuls

1. If Turbowarp doesn't work, try Forkphorus. It's known to use less RAM
2. Mobile devices (especially phones) don't have enough RAM. While they can easily run small projects, large projects (they don't even have to be games, there was a rickroll project which used 14/16GB of RAM for someone's M1 MacBook.

MathCookie

dhuls wrote:
1. If Turbowarp doesn't work, try Forkphorus. It's known to use less RAM

Forkphorus doesn’t work. The color and brightness effects simply don’t work, and sometimes something much more fundamental is broken: in Greyscale Wormhole Operator, for example, you’re supposed to lose once the spaceship touches a piece of debris, but on Forkphorus they just pass right through each other.

Chiroyce

MathCookie wrote:
This has been a problem ever since Scratch 3.0 released

Scratch 2.0 ran on flash, so isn't using HTML5 + JS much better?!

MathCookie wrote:
For the record, my mobile device is an iPad. If I had an Android tablet I’d just install the Scratch app, but I can’t do that on iPad.

iPad's run Scratch well enough, I used an iPad from 2014 for Scratch 3 for over 6 months and it worked well, except for a few bugs.

dhuls wrote:
(they don't even have to be games, there was a rickroll project which used 14/16GB of RAM for someone's M1 MacBook.

Yep,

~ https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/522770/

hiPeeps124816

Chiroyce wrote:
MathCookie wrote:
This has been a problem ever since Scratch 3.0 released
Scratch 2.0 ran on flash, so isn't using HTML5 + JS much better?!
MathCookie wrote:
For the record, my mobile device is an iPad. If I had an Android tablet I’d just install the Scratch app, but I can’t do that on iPad.
iPad's run Scratch well enough, I used an iPad from 2014 for Scratch 3 for over 6 months and it worked well, except for a few bugs.
dhuls wrote:
(they don't even have to be games, there was a rickroll project which used 14/16GB of RAM for someone's M1 MacBook.
Yep,

~ https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/522770/

I used Scratch 3 on a 2018 iPad and it can never even finish loading a moderately big featured project

ScolderCreations

I use scratch on a 2020 iPad, I can't even think about loading anything interesting

MathCookie

Chiroyce wrote:
MathCookie wrote:
This has been a problem ever since Scratch 3.0 released
Scratch 2.0 ran on flash, so isn't using HTML5 + JS much better?!

You’re not wrong- Scratch 2.0 didn’t support mobile devices at all. My point is that mobile device support was, as far as I’m aware, one of the goals Scratch Team had in the switch to 3.0, and it’s a goal that in my opinion isn’t being fully met.

Chiroyce wrote:
MathCookie wrote:
For the record, my mobile device is an iPad. If I had an Android tablet I’d just install the Scratch app, but I can’t do that on iPad.
iPad's run Scratch well enough, I used an iPad from 2014 for Scratch 3 for over 6 months and it worked well, except for a few bugs.

hiPeeps124816 wrote:
I used Scratch 3 on a 2018 iPad and it can never even finish loading a moderately big featured project

ScolderCreations wrote:
I use scratch on a 2020 iPad, I can't even think about loading anything interesting

So earlier-model iPads are actually better at loading Scratch projects than later ones? That’s interesting, but I’m not entirely surprised…

Last edited by MathCookie (July 4, 2021 00:27:00)

Chiroyce

MathCookie wrote:
So earlier-model iPads are actually better at loading Scratch projects than later ones? That’s interesting, but I’m not entirely surprised…

iOS version makes a difference, are you using 14.6? (iPadOS) and the newer ones actually come with more memory, but I'm not sure if Webkit limits memory without taking the total ram into consideration. After I've started using this 2020 MacBook, I have to say, that 2014 iPad is really slow, but in terms of scratch for viewing projects, it works well, unless that project has a lot of costumes.

Chiroyce

christopherplantevin wrote:
Bruh i own a 2014 iPad and scratch tell that i should use a modern web browser

update your iOS to iPadOS 14.6

scratcher1679

well, i have a galaxy tab a7, and everything runs really well….
my friend, also uses an ipad and it works perfec-
yes it sucks.

hiPeeps124816

Chiroyce wrote:
MathCookie wrote:
So earlier-model iPads are actually better at loading Scratch projects than later ones? That’s interesting, but I’m not entirely surprised…
iOS version makes a difference, are you using 14.6? (iPadOS) and the newer ones actually come with more memory, but I'm not sure if Webkit limits memory without taking the total ram into consideration. After I've started using this 2020 MacBook, I have to say, that 2014 iPad is really slow, but in terms of scratch for viewing projects, it works well, unless that project has a lot of costumes.

ios 15 should fix ram problems

MathCookie

hiPeeps124816 wrote:
ios 15 should fix ram problems

Though they used to be the same, the iOS used on iPhones is now separate from the iOS used on iPads (which is now called iPadOS). iOS may have a version 15, but iPadOS’s current version is 14.6.

dhuls

MathCookie wrote:
iOS may have a version 15, but iPadOS’s current version is 14.6.

Neither iOS 15 nor iPadOS 15 is out yet. Only the developer beta has been released.

Chiroyce

dhuls wrote:
Neither iOS 15 nor iPadOS 15 is out yet. Only the developer beta has been released.

hiPeeps124816 wrote:
ios 15 should fix ram problems

dhuls

Chiroyce wrote:
dhuls wrote:
Neither iOS 15 nor iPadOS 15 is out yet. Only the developer beta has been released.
hiPeeps124816 wrote:
ios 15 should fix ram problems

I was replying to @MathCookie. I already knew that @hiPeeps124816 said that iOS 15 might fix ram problems.

Chiroyce

dhuls wrote:
I was replying to @MathCookie. I already knew that @hiPeeps124816 said that iOS 15 might fix ram problems.

ohh yeah

hiPeeps124816

MathCookie wrote:
hiPeeps124816 wrote:
ios 15 should fix ram problems

Though they used to be the same, the iOS used on iPhones is now separate from the iOS used on iPads (which is now called iPadOS). iOS may have a version 15, but iPadOS’s current version is 14.6.

I'm talking about when they release

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