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ArcPro Overall Performance.

Nicholas_Burns

Hi All,

I’m constantly struggling with performance issues in ArcGIS Pro that make even the simplest workflows take far longer than they ever did in ArcMap. Opening the attribute table of a layer with fewer than 200 features, moving a point 100 ft, or just panning the map — every single action triggers lag, a “Modifying Feature” popup, or some other loading icon. It doesn’t seem to matter if the data is stored locally or on a network drive — the response time is still sluggish.

In ArcMap, I could handle much larger datasets with near-instant performance. The forced switch to Pro has honestly been maddening — it’s tough to keep up with my workload when I’m constantly waiting on the software to complete the most basic tasks. At times it feels like I spend more energy fighting Pro than actually doing my work.

I’ve tested this on multiple machines with similar results, so it doesn’t appear to be tied to just one environment.

I can’t be the only one running into this, so I’d love to hear from others:

Are you seeing the same level of sluggishness with relatively small datasets?

Have you found any specific settings (rendering engine, indexing, hardware acceleration, caching, etc.) that noticeably improve performance?

Is this truly just the nature of Pro compared to ArcMap, or could there be deeper configuration issues on my end?

Is there a way to connect with someone at Esri who can help assess my setup and confirm whether this is my machine or simply how Pro behaves?

Any insights, tweaks, or workflow adjustments that have made Pro more responsive would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Nick

System Specs:

ArcGIS Pro version: 3.5.0

OS: Windows 11

CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 165H

RAM: 32 GB

GPU 1/2 : Intel Arc Graphics / NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada Generation Laptop GPU

Storage: 500gb

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ShaneONeill_144

A clean uninstall and reinstall would be a good first step, failing that it would be worth reaching out to your local Esri Distributor for their assistance

-_-

Hi.

There's no doubt that ArcMap runs more smoothly than Pro.
However, it's also true that the features included in Pro are more powerful.
With such powerful features, it's understandable that it would be a little slower. I often find myself wondering, "Why does something like this make it so slow?"

I'll share one incident that improved speed.
I store shapefiles on a network, and when I changed all the data sources in my project from a NAS to a server, I noticed a noticeable improvement. I don't know the details, but my NAS seems to have been quite old, so that might be the reason. I assigned a drive letter to the server, but left the NAS as it was, so that may have had an effect.
In any case, any project that included even a single file stored on the NAS would take a long time to open or even perform a simple task, but changing all the data sources made it much less frustrating.

Eugene_Adkins

@AaronKoelker is spot on. Pro in certain setups can easily overwhelm computers that meet ESRI's published criteria. Working with a FGDB on your machine can be lighting quick ... use the same machine to work with data stored elsewhere and you can see a difference.

Additionally, if possible, contacting tech support may be helpful (though it could be a long, drawn-out process) because there are unknown bugs to new versions of Pro that negatively the software's performance because of the various ways Pro is being used its users "in the field" as compared to the way the development team is actually testing it. I'm speaking about this from personal experience.

RTPL_AU

When Esri basemaps are more performant in QGIS than in ArcGIS Pro you have to wonder what the Pro team are doing.

RTPL_AU

@Robert_LeClair
Thank you.
I do understand, more than most I assume, how Esri staff are placed in complex situations where you have to try to help in the Community but are seen as providing authoritative advice because of the green logo in your name.

My fundamental belief is that Esri staff when identified as such, give authoritative advice; otherwise should be in here as a regular Joe. Your opinion then 'should be your own and not represent that of Esri blah blah'...

As an Esri employee you are 100% better placed, with 6000 team mates, than a 1-guy business in Australia to effect change. Never undersell yourself in that regard.
You basically have the option to walk into Jack's office and say "I trained 25 people today and .......". If you don't feel like you can walk into the Exec offices and raise issues there is a culture problem from the top.

The Esri Community is not all that great; the engagement metrics show that it is full of eye-balls and empty of authoritative content. It is 'safer' that Reddit but, in my opinion, often used as a deflection tool for Esri or resellers to shirk clear and open communication with paying customers. None of the great Esri users I know are active in here at all.

Do I expect bugs in Pro? Yes. Do I expect to pay $10k per license every year for bugs / issues identified a decade ago? No!

What you can do for me is to look at everything you experience while presenting training from the paying customer's point of view. Be they new or experienced users in your groups, every hiccup, every 'where's that tool now' has a cost in the real world.

Example: Publishing 50 layers from 50 different projects to AGOL (say different Orgs, etc so cannot just quickly script them out) requires me to click into the timezone settings every single time multiplied by the clicks required to set all the options required.
Or the behaviour of using Paste Special to copy a feature class in a FGDB where Pro retains the alias of the source feature but most other copying methods sees Pro adopt the new FC name as the alias?

How do you address that in training? If addressed, what was the feedback from the users? Did they recognise the productivity impact from the design decisions? Should they have, or should you point it out to them? Are you allowed to point out flaws in the product?
When you compile a course on a new feature set is there an expectation from Esri for you to give efficiency feedback? When I was in the GM tech training unit the trainers were in direct contact with the engineers & designers so issues that were picked up at either end had a direct line back to the people that could fix or train people how to fix it after the fact.

If I were you I'd be buying lunch for selected senior devs at Esri every Friday...... Don't underestimate the power of mental notes made sticky over ramen, AG1, or pizza.

It's complicated, I get it. Stop thinking of yellow skittles.

Robert LeClair

@RTPL_AU -thank you for your response(s) and detailed explanation of your position. As a Senior Instructor and Principal Technical Lead in Esri Training Services, I have little to no impact on how the ArcGIS Pro application is programmed/managed/updated/released/<fill in the blank>. There are over 6000 Esri employees internationally and our primary goal is to serve our customers in any and all capacities with regards to GIS software and applications. The Esri Community is a wonderful platform for customers to ask questions, seek solutions, add ideas and more. I am an active participant on the ArcGIS Pro community as you likely know and try my best to answer customer questions so they may be successful in their respective roles in their organizations. I teach many ArcGIS Pro, file and enterprise geodatabase, web application classes and can only share my experiences with Pro and other platforms. I encourage you to reach out beyond the Ideas page and connect directly with the ArcGIS Pro development teams so your thoughts and ideas may be implemented in future releases of the application. Is ArcGIS Pro or ANY software application perfect? No. Together, customers and employees alike, we try to improve the application with each release. I don't have an answer for you. I wish I did. Respectfully - Robert

RTPL_AU

@Robert_LeClair
"the ribbon is responsive" - but it cannot beat a static, optimally placed toolbar a few cm away from where you are optimising your text in a map/layout can it? IMO the ribbon should not be 'responsive', it should just 'be' with no perceptible time taken to change/update on a very high end PC.
Also, the 'responsive' ribbon, in so many cases, still needs a 100% more clicks + mouse movement to do the same task as a static tool panel (move + click on tool vs move + click Ribbon category + move + click on tool). No debate can change that.

"I do clean uninstalls/reinstalls with every major release". Is it every X in X.Y.Z, every Y, or every Z with so many things that can get fixed/changed in every sub-dot?
If this is commented as 'is required' by Esri staff as an official position why doesn't the updater/installer do this?
The update process itself is either buggy & needs to be fixed, or Pro is now so flawed that workarounds are required at every update, which means the update process has to be changed.

Can you now see why I have lodged the Ideas related to containerising Pro, providing upgrade/downgrade tools with config auditing, changing the release cadence to a feature + LTS / bug fix cadence, open-sourcing the GUI, etc.?

RTPL_AU

@Nicholas_Burns

"Is this truly just the nature of Pro compared to ArcMap"
TLDR = Yes.

Anyone that stops drinking the red cordial will concur.

For many basic workflows like opening a project and making a basic map with nothing advanced, no special symbology, no radical geo-processing, and small datasets, the experience is pretty poor.
It has been for a decade.

When Pro works, it can be a fantastic tool but if your day-to-day intersects the flaws often, it will drive you up the wall without a Hardie's account

Esri people will pull you down to the coal-face to have you lodge cases on the minutia, while there are fundamentally flawed design decisions in the UI. Valid cases must definitely be lodged - up to you to decide how much time a case is worth.

Due to the many variables at play, it pays to make sure you have the fundamentals like hardware faults, bad network config, over-zealous-IT-admin lockdowns, etc sorted. Many people, from Esri and elsewhere, will post links to guide you through registry edits, full re-installs, etc. In my opinion, those should not be needed for a well written piece of software that can cost you 5 figures per user per year.

Doing a full re-install may or may not work. It doesn't fix bad design (license check feature in the house!).
Here are a list of current 3.5.x public bugs. Re-installing doesn't make them go away.
https://support.esri.com/en-us/search?s=Newest&product=arcgis+pro&cardtype=support_bug_articles&version=3%252E5&version=3%252E5%252E1&version=3%252E5%252E2
Esri also keeps some known bugs private and wait for us to lodge cases so they can judge how important they are to us. (Map series to PDF page options.....). This is normal and I understand why, but it still irks me to spend the hours needed to build a case on something they know about.

In my experience, where I have had control over everything across multiple network configs, multiple very high spec computers, various Windows flavours, Pro seems to be extremely susceptible to 'things' that cause it to break and behave poorly, over & above finding badly designed features (such as the excessive license checking that they fixed in 3.5, replaced by a crash on copy bug).

Be prepared to have a config that works OK, only to have it rendered nearly inoperable by a new bug in a new version. Then be prepared to spend hours & hours trying to get your local mandatory reseller (who are also commercial competitors) to require copies of your data, processes, etc.

From what I can see there is no authoritative Pro configuration guide with regards to rendering engine settings etc. Comments from Esri and others look to be anecdotal at best. This is most likely due to there being so many variables in play.

Tips - Learn about computers. What makes them work best? Contrary to Esri advice do not just blindly update to the latest everything - follow external guidance to the best GPU drivers, best Windows updates, etc to use. I have an Idea posted for Esri to provide a curated list of versions they have tested Pro against and certify to be stable. Please upvote it if you think it will help.
Learn networking and what makes a performant network and how to back up data efficiently. Pro on a bad network is nasty!
Learn how to optimise data and make it it perform well (using FGDB vs SHP is a great start).
These will help you sidestep the "it's your computer", "it's your network", "it's your data" when complaining about performance.

Learn to use all the various GIS & data tools available to us. QGIS, R, even bare GDAL, are your friends. Do not get rid of ArcMap (unless you don't have perpetual licenses). IT WILL KEEP ON WORKING unless Microsoft does something to make apps like it not run anymore. Your clients don't care if the PDF they receive was made in Pro, ArcMap or PowerPoint (excluding data responsibility aspects obviously).
Use the best tool for the job!!
If you have an IT department, start working with them now so they get to understand that the nature of being efficient in GIS in 2025 is no longer centred on just one app, but a toolkit made up of many tools.

To navigate Pro successfully you have to become a master of finding workarounds - you'll have a deadline and Pro plays up. You have to find a way to get your client the product he deserves without blowing the budget and once you've paid the bills and have time left over, lodge cases on the problems where you can. Please reserve time to post issues in this community so that others, who may have a support office unable to replicate their issue, can see they are not alone; and find solutions or workarounds to these issues.

P.S.
My thoughts on why relatively few people complain about performance:
1: They don't know any better. Based on what I've seen over the years, many corporate network environments are done badly, with huge techno-debt and underfunded IT. The overall user experience is slow, with things like VOIP & PC shared 1GBE network links, slow bootup times due to complex/bad GPOs, slow folder browsing, etc. Sometimes the computers are barely up to running Excel, never mind something complex.
In 2025 we have now had near 3 generations exposed to this; so if a bright new GIS gun walks in the door of their first GIS gig at a local council, they can only compare Pro's performance with what their parents and grandparents have endured and complained about their entire life, they've seen at their school or Uni, and what they may have built at home using hand-me-down parts.
I'm lucky. I've been doing computers & networks for a long time so I actually know what good performance looks like. No. Wait. that makes me unlucky in this context.....

2: They don't care. Look at the latest salary reviews - people are getting paid peanuts and now we want them to spend extra time to ask their GIS managers etc to lodge cases on their behalf (if you pay peanuts you typically don't give staff authority to deal with vendors....).

P.P.S
If you find the UI to be laggy & slow, you can always follow the official Esri advice of 'Work Slower'........

Robert LeClair

Sorry to hear you're experiencing these issues - it's not ideal to put it mildly. I HIGHLY recommend you contact Esri Support Services, create a case and work with them to troubleshoot the issue. I've been working with ArcGIS Pro for years in Esri Training Services and my laptop has had no major issues running GP tools, the ribbon is responsive, I do clean uninstalls/reinstalls with every major release, update my video card drivers regularly and more.

More resources for you:
Solved: Slowness in Arcgis Pro - Esri Community
Performance in ArcGIS Pro—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation
Machine performance optimizations—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation
Troubleshooting Performance Issues in ArcGIS Pro
ArcGIS Pro Extremely Slow in 2024 - Esri Community

AaronKoelker

In my experience, ArcGIS Pro's performance plummets if you are working with data over any sort of network. Web services, data on shared network drives, a Documents folder that is mapped through a One Drive account, etc., will all slow down even the simplest editing tasks to a crawl. Doesn't matter how beefy your PC specs are. Working over network drives is a common practice in a workplace environment, but for whatever reason Pro has always struggled with it. It's been an issue for so long that at this point I assume it is just an inherit limitation of however the software is structured.

As a test, copy some data that you are experiencing performance issues with to a local drive, preferably the same physical storage device that ArcGIS Pro is installed to. Run the same editing tasks and see if there is an improvement. The difference is often night and day in my experience.

MErikReedAugusta

I think some of it seems to just be nature of the beast. Pro is dynamically generating far more in the UI than ArcMap was, so there are frequently times that I'll see the UI grey out while it "thinks" about what it's supposed to do next. Personally, I often feel that ESRI might've gone a bit too far with that UI dynamism (or alternatively not far enough towards optimization), but I also feel like the ship has long since sailed on doing anything else. And I definitely won't go back to ArcMap. Even with the occasional slowness, I find Pro far preferable.

Given that I'm in the public sector at the municipal level, I'm mostly stuck with what I've got on the computer specs side of things, especially when you factor the reduced capabilities because of the layer(s) of software added by IT Security.

So I've just developed mild "workarounds" for some of my more frequently-encountered cases—like importing our aerial imagery via Right Click->"Add to Map", rather than dragging. The first one will always show me when Pro is "thinking", so I can wait more or less patiently. The second one will just fail to drag every time you try prematurely, and my click-happy responses to that situation often cause it to "think" even more, leaving me in a feedback loop of frustration. So I just mostly stopped dragging raster data in like that.

danretired

There is the usual recommendation on what to check

Troubleshooting Performance Issues in ArcGIS Pro

and dozens of posts along a similar vein to yours.

Tech Support is generally the recommendation

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