… needs “long” time (KiCad (5.1.6)-1).
Loading footprints takes about 15 seconds on my system (8*2 CPUs) with a CPU usage of 90%.
The CPU is used by KiCad.
Is this normal to this extent or should I check my installation?
On the other hand, access to the symbol library is without any conspicuousness.
Tarik
5.1.6 is pretty old. KiCad is now 5.1.10 (or possibly 5.1.11 depending on your operating system). An update is likely to fix quite a few issues. Slowish library loading was a problem with early versions.
5.1.10 still takes about 10 sec. first time for me for all footprint libraries.
5.99 is under 2 sec.
I have a 10 year old PC, and adding the first schematic symbol to a schematic often triggers the “footprint loading” / creation of footprint cache file and on my PC this takes 25 seconds on KiCad V5.1.x
On KiCad-nightly V5.99 this is takes around 5 seconds on my old pc.
It’s a first gen i7 -870 @ 2.93GHz.
Weird. I’m running KiCad 5.1.9 on an ancient Athlon x2, and it only takes about 5 seconds for me.
I do have an SSD, though. Maybe that’s what makes the difference?
I do have an SSD, and both my OS and all programs are installed on it.
My KiCad projects are not however, those are on my data HDD.
I should have mentioned that this only / mostly ? happens when the fp-info-cache file is re-generated, but I had times when it seemed to always happen when I switched between projects.
Recently I had to switch from KiCad Stable V5 to the JS-Reynaud-nightly V5 for KiCad V5.1.x because of a library conflict in OCC between KiCad V5.1.x and KiCad V5.99. and now I can not reproduce it anymore. This newer nightly is a lot quicker in library loading.
The JS-Reynaud version does not create the fp-info-cache file anymore in the project directory. And when I delete it, it just stays away.
Adding the first schematic symbol in Eeschema now takes approx 5s, while adding further (other) schematic symbols are near instantly.
The link below suggest that KiCad V5.1.11 is close to release:
I suppose it depends on overall setups.
My PC uses an i5-10400 with the Kicad programme and libraries on a SSD but all my personal libraries are on an internal 1TB spin-around HD and my projects are all on another internal 2TB spin-around HD.
I’m not at all fussed with the 15 seconds as it gives me time for a sip of coffee. 
It’s easy to get parched with 5.99 though. 
I am using 5.1.10 and I think in this aspect it works faster than some previous (5.1.?) version. I am writing about my full KiCad installation I use only when I want to report a bug. Normally I work at second PC and use there only defined by me libraries (I think about 200 footprints till now) and there I have never noticed any annoying delays.
On my fairly high spec desktop 5.1.10 measures 6 seconds and latest 5.99 rather less.
Mechanical HDs are problem, directories get fragmented and then you get the seek delay for each file
I have a new computer, which should be far better than my old one in every way, and it takes about 18 seconds now. Either 5.1.12 got a lot slower than 5.1.9, or else the old computer is faster than the new computer.
(The new computer has an NVMe SSD, 8-core Ryzen, and 64 gigs of RAM. Versus 2-core Athlon and 3 gigs of RAM for the old computer.)
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