High CPU usage in Chrome/Opera

cpugoogle-chromeperformanceweb-browser

When I open 1-2 tabs with sites that have many images (e-shop as an example) the CPU usage gets to 100% for Chrome/Opera/Firefox.

What I've tried:

Reset Chrome to default settings
Disabled all extensions
Disabled "Use hardware acceleration" in Chrome settings
Checked task manager in Chrome. Couldn't find anything except that a process called "Browser" takes all the CPU (100%+)
Run malware check on MacOS with 2 different programs (avast and malwarebyte)
Run diagnostics after restarting MacOS

Looks like any browser with webkit engine suddenly started consuming 100% CPU on any site which has at least some dynamic content, maybe images or some JS or something like that. Basically any site.

MacOS version: Big Sur 11.1

CPU: 2,5 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

RAM: 16 GB

Graphics: Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

Best Answer

Having the same issue. It's not very good even in Safari. I suspect the mtlcompilerservice, as I load pages I see a lot of instances of it in the Activity Monitor, consuming high CPU. TGPro shows high temperature of the CPU, 90+ celcius. Video playback heats up the device but loading pages and browsing around is the worst offender.

I have the 15" mid 2014 model with Iris Pro & Nvidia gt 750m. I thought the reason for overheating/fans-kicking-in-whenever-they-please was that Apple changed some things as to how GPUs work in Big Sur.

I'll try installing Big Sur to a separate volume, and if that doesn't help, I'll re-install macOS, starting from High Sierra and update here.

--
Idle temp: 54-60 C
Browsing: 70+ C

Related Solutions

MacOS – Process “ubd” high CPU usage

By observing log messages in ~/Library/Logs/Ubiquity/<my username>/, I realized that Ubiquity (iCloud process) kept trying to create a file in a folder that doesn't exist:

ubiquity log

I opened up the Terminal and created this directory and its parent directories up to .ubd:

cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/
sudo mkdir .ubd && cd .ubd
sudo mkdir peer-E2B13E4F-56F7-C79B-1621-E30738B638FE-v23 && cd peer-E2B13E4F-56F7-C79B-1621-E30738B638FE-v23
sudo mkdir ftr

Then I changed the newly created directories' owner from root to myself:

cd ../..
sudo chown -R <my username> .ubd/

The fan turned silent instantly.

How to use process sample in order to find high cpu usage in Chrome

You can view Chrome's page memory usage by pressing the button in the top right of the Window. There you will get this menu: Menu

When you click 'View Background Pages' you'll see a window like this: Window

This obviously narrows down page and extension usage by memory and CPU. This should help finding out exactly what's going on with it.

The 'Stats for nerds' link sends you to chrome://memory-redirect/ which breaks down their memory usage even more.

Side note when I notice chrome using a lot of memory and open /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app I typically see it is caused by PepperFlashPlayer (Chrome Plug-In Host) which is Chrome's built in Flash player. It is known for hogging CPU

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Process “ubd” high CPU usage

How to use process sample in order to find high cpu usage in Chrome

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