Mac – Why does the Macbook overheat and use so much CPU and energy when on YouTube

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For a long time now, my Macbook has been overheating and hogging my CPU. According to Activity Monitor, Google Chrome Helper is the culprit. Whenever I am browsing the web, there are usually ten seperate entries of Google Chrome Helper in Activity Monitor, each individually using around %0.5 of my CPU. On YouTube, one of these can spike up to using %82, with a second using %22. I don't understand the math behind it but its evident in the screenshots I took. I own an up-to-date MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012) so it could be a result of an old system but only Chrome and YouTube (or just videos) are causing this issue.

Here are some things I’ve attempted to control / solve this:

  • updating FlashPlayer
  • disabling extentions
  • turning off Unsandboxed plug-in access to "not allow any site to use a plug-in to access [my] computer"
  • turning off JavaScript (which, of course, just stopped the page from loading in – very power efficient and cool, but not the trade off I had hoped to accomplish)

I've tried other web browsing apps and they net similar results as Chrome. I believe it has something to do with videos in general that are being served

At the moment, I have had to use an app called MacsFanControl so my fan stops the CPU and computer from overheating as it used to get to around 50˚C. Now, it is sits at 40˚C with the fan running on high to prevent it increasing.

Am I missing controls or options to have less heat from the CPU of this era MacBook Pro?

Best Answer

You can test the efficiency of video encoding and decoding quite well by getting a video from Apple’s events page and playing it in QuickTime player.

Same in Safari - and then same in Chrome.

You’ll quickly find out which encoding are easy to run for the CPU and which have GPU acceleration.

When that’s done, you can see if Chrome or the app in question can choose a lower resolution or if you can download the file for offline playing so that it doesn’t hit the CPU so hard. Also, you might use an iPad or other far more efficient video handling device if you just want to watch videos with the most economy / least power.

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