Can the performance of PagedList and RecyclerView interaction be improved?

Question

In my Android app i'm showing data in a RecyclerView using Room and the Paging library.

My implementation is quite similar to the example in the AsyncPagedListDiffer docs.

The flow is the following:

1. Data is changed in the database

2. A corresponding Observer passes the changes to the Adapter:

   myLiveData.observe(viewLifecycleOwner, Observer {
       myAdapter.submitList(it)
   })
   

3. The AsyncPagedListDiffer calculates the diff and updates the list accordingly

My problem is the performance hit of step 3.

Even if i insert just one single item to the top of the list, the differ have to check all of the items (which is quite inefficient, especially with larger datasets), whereas a simple notifyItemInserted(0) call would be sufficient.

Is there a way around this behavior?

For example, can i tell the differ that it doesn't have to check all of the items? Or any other solutions to this?

I'd really appreciate any advice.

Noncombatant