I know there are already earlier posts on this topic, but honestly, clicking the “Vote” +1 on those really doesn’t emphasize this pain.
Every time I create or edit an “large” workflow (like more than 30+ nodes), I currently waste a ton of time having to shuffle/move nodes around in the workflow, so that the structure remains readable. We’re talking anywhere from 15 mins to 1 hour. It’s ridiculous.
The fact that there’s not an auto-layout option in the UI to move/reorder nodes automatically gives me serious pause about creating any very large workflows in the n8n platform.
I should be spending time creating – not time reorganizing.
The only way around this problem, is to force your users to “think” about node design in a very rigid way, where they need to know exactly how many branches/loops they will need ahead of time, before starting development. That is a huge point of friction towards standard “test-driven development” – where you build a little, test a little, and iterate.
The auto-layout feature doesn’t have to be “perfect”. Heck, even make.com’s auto-layout feature is really bad with very large scenarios, but it’s better than nothing, which is the case on n8n. I would gladly take a bad auto-layout feature versus nothing at all.
Why are you building large workflows? I have used a big amount of nodes couples of times, but generally that’s very ambiguous. It’s getting too complex to operate with, hard to debug and consumes many resources just to draw nodes