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Woyzeck

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 2, 2012
442
500
Hi,

since a few days my M1 MBP shows several symptoms of performance reduction. In general the UI is laggy, the mouse cursor shows intermittent stops, scrolling in Safari stops for about half a second and continues afterwards.
Furthermore the Spotlight search prompt disappears after 1-2 seconds, indicating an ongoing reindex-process.

And the CPU meter shows strange, regular spikes even when idle:
1681401139125.png


The notebook is about a month old and running 24x7, so the initial indexing should be completed by now.

Any ideas ?
 

Woyzeck

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 2, 2012
442
500
Rebooting solves the problem temporarily, but after an hour or so it's in the same state of dispair again.
 

Woyzeck

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 2, 2012
442
500
So that Onyx magic solved the issue. My MBP is now fast again - thx guys for your help !
 
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MacRumor Pro

Suspended
Apr 14, 2023
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Hi,

since a few days my M1 MBP shows several symptoms of performance reduction. In general the UI is laggy, the mouse cursor shows intermittent stops, scrolling in Safari stops for about half a second and continues afterwards.
Furthermore the Spotlight search prompt disappears after 1-2 seconds, indicating an ongoing reindex-process.

I really appreciate you sharing this. I have noticed that doing something as simple as adjusting the volume on my M1 Mac Mini makes my CPU usage spike even if I have no open apps. I don't recall how long this has been going on, but rebooting only fixes the problem temporarily, and no MacOS updates fix it. I'll give Onyx a try. I have never used a 3rd party app to fix a problem with MacOS. What feature in Onyx did you use to fix this problem?

What's weird is I have a M1 Pro MacBook Pro, and it doesn't have this problem even if it has over 2 weeks of uptime.
 

MacRumor Pro

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Apr 14, 2023
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Here's my CPU usage just from adjusting the volume. This is nuts. Even my ancient 2011 iMac never did this.
Screenshot 2023-04-14 at 7.03.12 PM.png
 

MacRumor Pro

Suspended
Apr 14, 2023
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Try running the OnyX maintenance tasks then.
I should have kept reading. I just did this. I will need to keep my Mac running for at least 2 days before I declare victory. I'll report back in a few days to let everyone know if Onyx solved my problem too. 🤞
 
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Woyzeck

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 2, 2012
442
500
So, two days later those CPU spikes are back again. That POS notebook feels like a Windows computer from the 90s. Apple, do something.

Is there a way to find out which process is causing those CPU spikes ?
 

Woyzeck

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 2, 2012
442
500
Pure madness - this is how my MBP uses its cores while in idle for an hour:
Screenshot 2023-04-15 at 14.25.11.png
 

MacRumor Pro

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Apr 14, 2023
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So, two days later those CPU spikes are back again.
I had a feeling this solution was too good to be true. This is obviously a problem that Apple needs to fix. Damn. What I don't understand is why it's inconsistent. Why is it happening on my Mac Mini but not my MacBook Pro? Let's hope Apple fixes this ASAP.
 

MacRumor Pro

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Apr 14, 2023
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That POS notebook feels like a Windows computer from the 90s. Apple, do something.
I was thinking about doing a clean install of MacOS, after backing everything up, to see if that fixes the problem. Have you considered that?
 

MacRumor Pro

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Apr 14, 2023
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By the way, I can confirm that less than 24 hours later my CPU spike problem has returned on my Mac Mini. Onyx didn't fix this problem.
 

Woyzeck

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 2, 2012
442
500
The thing with macos' system monitor is that I can sort by CPU consumption, but the value for that is just aggregated, so not much of a help when it comes to identifying the cause of a spike.
 

Woyzeck

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 2, 2012
442
500
In my case I'm pretty sure that the CPU issue is related to Spotlight. It's laggy whenever the spotlight text field disappears after a few seconds.
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,175
13,223
You could turn OFF Spotlight, using this command:
sudo mdutil -a -i off

Another possible command to disable Spotlight:
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

This may re-enable it:
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
(not sure if the above command works, I ALWAYS disable spotlight on EVERY Mac, and have NEVER turned it back on)
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,175
13,223
"Works only if SIP is disabled."

I've immediately DISABLED SIP on every Mac/OS I've installed, since SIP was introduced.

No problems at all.
 

Woyzeck

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 2, 2012
442
500
Ok, just a quick update. The situation has improved after I downloaded all my iCloud content to the local drive. Dunno why, but my theory is that macos tries to index remote files and that process doesn't run as smooth as it should.
 
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