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engbren

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 21, 2011
138
99
Australia
My m1 MBA which is a 16GB RAM/512GB storage configuration has started having some stuttering performance issues. I am not doing anything particularly taxing, often running just Chrome with several tabs open for Gmail, Google Docs, Google Meet essentially alot of Google Suite + occasional use of MS Teams for meetings but this is done via browser rather than app. Essentially what happens is that I get to a point where the mac stops responding to keyboard / mouse input for a few seconds and then starts processing it again. Due to the length of time between the initial click and the action, I've often thought my click mustn't have registered and so clicked on a UI element again. However, when it starts processing the clicks, it processes the initial click and subsequent click so say to open a menu in google docs and then close the menu.

When this issue occurs, the MBA keyboard feels noticably warm, so I suspect its thermal throttling. However, there is nothing substantially changed in my workload that and certainly nothing that should cause any issue. I've checked and macOS is up to date, as is Chrome. Anyone else seen this kind of thermal throttling in their m1 MBA? Any tips on debugging?
 
What is the status of your battery's health? Do you experience this "stuttering" when on battery / on AC power / both? Download a system monitoring app and monitor the temperature sensors of your system. I happen to like iStat menus very much.
 
Check in Activity Monitor what's using the CPU and how much RAM is used.
Anyway, running such things in a browser is one of the most taxing thing you can do in term of RAM usage.
 
My m1 MBA which is a 16GB RAM/512GB storage configuration has started having some stuttering performance issues. I am not doing anything particularly taxing, often running just Chrome with several tabs open for Gmail, Google Docs, Google Meet essentially alot of Google Suite + occasional use of MS Teams for meetings but this is done via browser rather than app. Essentially what happens is that I get to a point where the mac stops responding to keyboard / mouse input for a few seconds and then starts processing it again. Due to the length of time between the initial click and the action, I've often thought my click mustn't have registered and so clicked on a UI element again. However, when it starts processing the clicks, it processes the initial click and subsequent click so say to open a menu in google docs and then close the menu.

When this issue occurs, the MBA keyboard feels noticably warm, so I suspect its thermal throttling. However, there is nothing substantially changed in my workload that and certainly nothing that should cause any issue. I've checked and macOS is up to date, as is Chrome. Anyone else seen this kind of thermal throttling in their m1 MBA? Any tips on debugging?
That isn't a typical symptom of thermal throttling, and in an M1 MBA, the temperature at which that happens would commonly be rather higher than 'noticeably warm'. Not just that but when the system throttles, it tends to reduce demand on the processor, but aside from a loss of overall performance, often not noticeable or barely so, you wouldn't experience a loss of input responsiveness of that sort.

I'd agree with the suggestion to use the CPU tab in Activity Monitor, with %CPU set to show the highest->lowest. That'll give you a clue as to what process is consuming CPU time when this happens.

I doubt it's memory related since you have 16Gb. Chrome can be a bit brutal on memory use, but unless there's a lot of demand, or outages in your internet while you're actively in your Google suite, it shouldn't be a problem.

Does this happen when working entirely offline?
 
I've noticed some stuttering on my M1 MBA recently as well if I have around 15+ tabs open in Safari. Never happened before with far more tabs open and multiple applications running. I assumed it has to do with recent macOS updates. I have not noticed any warming of the laptop.
 
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What color is the memory pressure indicator when this happens? You want it to be green. If it's orange or red, that can cause a noticeable reduction in responsiveness.

You can find it at the bottom of the Memory tab in Activity Monitor:

1710639712703.png
 
Thanks all for your suggestions:
What is the status of your battery's health? Do you experience this "stuttering" when on battery / on AC power / both? Download a system monitoring app and monitor the temperature sensors of your system. I happen to like iStat menus very much.
Battery health is rated as normal in System Settings with a maximum capacity of 89%. I typically use my machine on AC power with occasional use off. I noticed that this issue is occurring in both situations - on AC power and on battery. I haven't heard of iStat menus for such a long time - pretty sure I was using it on an older MBA either a 2011 or 2014.. I've installed the trial version.
I'd agree with the suggestion to use the CPU tab in Activity Monitor, with %CPU set to show the highest->lowest. That'll give you a clue as to what process is consuming CPU time when this happens.
I tried this and it seems Google Chrome and Google Chrome Helper were using the most CPU between them about 40%. I did notice that there were three extensions enabled in Chrome for Google Drive and Suite offline which I have disabled as I rarely use them offline anyway. I will see how that goes.
I doubt it's memory related since you have 16Gb. Chrome can be a bit brutal on memory use, but unless there's a lot of demand, or outages in your internet while you're actively in your Google suite, it shouldn't be a problem.
I didn't even check RAM usage as I've never run out before even under significantly more load than in recent times. To get a baseline, it seems to use just less than 11GB RAM with normal usage with memory pressure showing as green.
 
I recently had a similar issue on my 2018 MacBook Air, It just started running really slow with the fan running full ball all the time even at idle, I think it was due to doing OS updates without a fresh install since 2018 when I purchased it. I fixed it by formatting the Drive and installing Sonoma Fresh, runs like new now.
 
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