"Loading ..." display while scrolling

[valoq]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Problem

When scrolling a document with either the arror keys or the mouse wheel, the current version of zathura displays a "loading ..." message in the middle of the document for a split second.
Going throught eh entire document once seems to fix the issue for soem reason.

Steps to reproduce

Open a pdf document, use arro keys or mouse wheel to scroll through it

Expected behavior

No loading message on the first pages. The Messaage should probably only be displayed when navigating to a distant page or going quickly through many pages.

zathura version (zathura --version)

2026.01.30

girara version (zathura --version)

2026.01.30

zathura backend

poppler

[itshog]

I believe that this is related to #860 and stems from the same root cause, namely pages redrawing themselves independently more than they should (and so taking longer than expected to load)

[valoq]

That may be relates, yes.
The issue is still present in 2026.02.03

[gi1242]

The same happens to me if you scroll with the middle mouse button. (It didn't happen with previous versions as far as I remember)

[valoq]

I tested the current git version with the patch that was supposed to fix this, but I can see no difference, the loading message still appears at every scroll event.

(Note: I dont have permissions to repopen this issue)

[jchilds0]

I can't reproduce then, could you post a pdf where this occurs and the log using -l debug after triggering a loading message? Nevermind, yes I can reproduce.

[jchilds0]

When navigating in zathura 0.5.14 and earlier, the next page would be cached by the GtkViewport (even if it is not visible at this point and thus you don't see the loading message), due to https://docs.gtk.org/gtk3/drawing-model.html#scrolling. With the patch above applied, while a page is cached you shouldn't see the loading message.

[valoq]

I reproduced the issue again with the following steps:

git clone https://github.com/jchilds0/zathura -b page-visibility
cd zathura && meson build && cd build && ninja
./zathura --plugins-dir /usr/lib/zathura/ ~/test.pdf

It seems to be unrelated to the specific pdf file, but this is one I tested: https://landlock.io/talks/2024-06-06_landlock-article.pdf

The loading message still appears every time
All other dependencies like zathura-pdf-poppler and giarara are version 2026.02.03

[jchilds0]

@sebastinas could you reopen this issue?

[valoq]

The patch from #870 has indeed removed the "loading" that appeared when using the arros or mouse wheel.
However, using page down/up still has this message appear and I still get the impression that it is way more visible then it used to be.
I will do some more tests of old versions for now though, it may be "fixed" as in behaving as before for now.

[jchilds0]

The message on page up/down occurs more frequently now because GtkViewport in the previous version would draw more than the visible screen, so the next page would be cached before you see it. The DocumentWidget just needs to be updated to do this also