Hello, Elgaroe,
Thank you for providing such detailed test results.
To achieve visual color swatches without triggering severe transient bloat, we recommend using the XStore Smart Product Filters widget instead of the legacy Swatches Filter widget:
1. Widget Setup
Navigate to Appearance > Widgets (or Appearance > Customize > Shop Filters) and add the XStore Smart Product Filters widget to your shop sidebar.
Add an attribute item for Color (pa_color) and set the Display Type to Color / Image Swatches.
Add attribute items for Size (pa_talla) and Cup Size (pa_copa) using Dropdown or List format.
2. Recommended Settings
AJAX Option: Set filter submission/behavior to AJAX (or standard redirect), but disable “AJAX Preload” to avoid generating background count queries for all variation permutations.
Product Counts: Keep product counts disabled for these attribute filters, as calculating counts dynamically across multi-attribute products is what forces WooCommerce to build large _transient_wc_layered_nav_counts_* arrays.
3. Next Steps & Investigation
Our development team is reviewing the query behavior of the legacy XStore Swatches Filter widget under WooCommerce 11.x to optimize its transient caching strategy in upcoming theme updates.
In the meantime, testing the XStore Smart Product Filters with the settings above will provide full visual swatch support while keeping transient sizes small (under 0.05 MB). Please let us know how the performance looks once applied!
Best regards,
8Theme Support Team