+.. _show-large:
+
+Dealing with large messages and threads
+---------------------------------------
+
+If you are finding :ref:`notmuch-show` is annoyingly slow displaying
+large messages, you can customize
+:el:defcustom:`notmuch-show-max-text-part-size`. If you want to speed up the
+display of large threads (with or without large messages), there are
+several options. First, you can display the same query in one of the
+other modes. :ref:`notmuch-unthreaded` is the most robust for
+extremely large queries, but :ref:`notmuch-tree` is also be faster
+than :ref:`notmuch-show` in general, since it only renders a single
+message a time. If you prefer to stay with the rendered thread
+("conversation") view of :ref:`notmuch-show`, you can customize the
+variables :el:defcustom:`notmuch-show-depth-limit`,
+:el:defcustom:`notmuch-show-height-limit` and
+:el:defcustom:`notmuch-show-max-text-part-size` to limit the amount of
+rendering done initially. Note that these limits are implicitly
+*OR*-ed together, and combinations might have surprising effects.
+
+.. el:defcustom:: notmuch-show-depth-limit
+
+ |docstring::notmuch-show-depth-limit|
+
+.. el:defcustom:: notmuch-show-height-limit
+
+ |docstring::notmuch-show-height-limit|
+
+.. el:defcustom:: notmuch-show-max-text-part-size
+
+ |docstring::notmuch-show-max-text-part-size|
+