Improve the speed

It's hard to give a recommendation on this as an abstraction, here.

Could you please turn this into a self-contained reprex (short for reproducible example) with some dummy data so we can see what packages you're using, etc.?

install.packages("reprex")

If you've never heard of a reprex before, you might want to start by reading the tidyverse.org help page. The reprex dos and don'ts are also useful.

What to do if you run into clipboard problems

If you run into problems with access to your clipboard, you can specify an outfile for the reprex, and then copy and paste the contents into the forum.

reprex::reprex(input = "fruits_stringdist.R", outfile = "fruits_stringdist.md")

For pointers specific to the community site, check out the reprex FAQ, linked to below.