Windowserver

[heden]

On these mac studios is it normal to have windowserver running so high on cpu for the smallest of tasks? Even just opening Ableton sets it off at 35 percent cpu. Maybe I am overthinking this, I just never saw WS this high up in Activity Monitor on my older mac.

On this mac studio Max its just always windowserver and kernel task running simultaneously at more or less same percentages.

Tried 12.3.1 update but still the same

 

[appltech]

It could be related to iCloud sync or Time Machine. Try to disable them first

 

[heden]

Ive optimised the machine for music production so these are already disabled, but thanks

 

[eddie_ducking]

it could also be a reporting nuance ... Activity Monitor reports 0-100% for each core regardless of the cores' speed. If memory serves and I've no idea where I read it months back, the Performance cores are around 3.3x quicker than the Efficiency cores, so if a thread (like windowserver) is running on an efficiency core, it'll report 3x greater % usage than it would if it were on a Performance core (assuming the time taken to complete the thread is the same in both cases)

would 10% usage match up with what you saw on your old Mac (which only had a set of identical performing cores) ?

 

[Mr Screech]

I'm around the same percentage on my M1, so it's probably normal.
When no video is running and I stop using my mouse it goes to <5%.
As soon as I move my cursor it jumps to 30+%.
Since it's only one core, it's 'nothing'.

 

[Fravin]

The Windowserver is the User Interface layer of MacOS.

It's been around since MacOS X. It's responsible to the graphic part of system. The high use of resources was always there. Perhaps you didn't noticed it.