Apple Notes Becomes Sluggish with Smart Folders - Applies to macOS Sonoma and macOS Ventura

Is anyone else experiencing Apple Notes sluggishness when Smart Folders are used and data is being synced with iCloud? The problem occurs in macOS Sonoma and macOS Ventura. The problem was worse in macOS Sonoma. It was so bad in Sonoma, I had to downgrade to Ventura because Apple Notes was essentially unusable.

When I noticed the problem:

The problem started when I created smart folders to automatically collect files with certain tags. I have about 2000 notes in my entire Apple Notes database.

Steps I took to resolve problem. (Applies to macOS Sonoma and macOS Ventura):

1. Restarted and shutdown computer several times.

2. Checked WiFi and ethernet network connections

3. Signed out of Apple iCloud to stop sync. Signed back in (several times) which resulted in a new syncs. (I did this several times. I also gave computer about 12 hours to fully complete sync.)

4. Reinstalled macOS Sonoma several times.

5. Downgraded to macOS Ventura (which was a royal pain Apple!)

6. Re-synced Apple Notes.

7. Deleted all Smart Folders in Apple Notes. (This finally allowed Apple Notes to start to behave more like it should but it still seemed a bit slow. The slow speed might have been at that point Apple Notes was probably still syncing in the background but there was no visible active icon for iCloud syncing in Apple Finder.)

8. Turned off Apple Notes completely from syncing with Apple iCloud. (I now do not have any access to my notes stored in my Apple account. I only have local data at this point.)

Thoughts:

1. I think the root of the problem is with iCloud and Apple Notes syncing data.

2. There is something wrong with the macOS Sonoma code which makes the problem significantly worse.

3. It might be Apple Notes really can’t handle a large database. Maybe it can handle text but once you start populating it with photos and attachments the app just starts to fall apart.