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m1 mini drives me crazy

D

digitalField

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 21, 2004
123
8
portland
The M1 mini drives me absolutely crazy. I have had it since launch and its progressively gotten slower and more sluggish.

This was earlier today. Only apps open were Spotify (not playing), Preview (3 pdfs) and Chrome (10-15 tabs). Pretty horrible experience.

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Maybe test Safari to see if it would help? I actually had to switch from Safari to Chrome since watching Twitch on Safari was destroying my memory.
I agree though, it doesn’t seem like a lot to ask but I bet all those tabs are killing it for you.
 
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Sheepish-Lord said:
Maybe test Safari to see if it would help? I actually had to switch from Safari to Chrome since watching Twitch on Safari was destroying my memory.
I agree though, it doesn’t seem like a to ask but I bet all those tabs are killing it for you.
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Just from what we can see, Chrome is using over 4GB. We cannot see below the 100MB threshold. I'm sure OP's workflow requires Chrome extensions, or they just dislike Safari, but Chrome is what is killing the performance.
 
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Mlrollin91 said:
Just from what we can see, Chrome is using over 4GB. We cannot see below the 100MB threshold. I'm sure OP's workflow requires Chrome extensions, or they just dislike Safari, but Chrome is what is killing the performance.
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Yea, my place of employment is a 0356 shop, and their associated cloud apps are a bit buggy on Safari. I can take another screenshot of items below 100MB if thats helpful - I know Adobe/Core/CC processes are always creeping down there no matter how much i try to kill them.
 
digitalField said:
Not unreasonable for a consumer to assume that the base model would be able to perform base daily tasks... but that does seem that you are right ?
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It does seem that you are using it for more than just basic daily tasks though. I get and appreciate the frustration, but given how you are using the device, 16GB seems like a must. Chrome is known for being a memory hog, and with 10-15 tabs at a given time, seems like a recipe for issues with 8GB.

Base model is definitely capable of running daily basic tasks, even some light gaming (my wife plays the Sims 4 on her base MBA). But I personally do not think your use is basic daily tasks. Sorry I cannot offer more assistance. I recommend using less tabs or trying to switch to Safari as much as possible. Definitely not what you want to hear.
 
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Something doesn't sound right to me. I frequently run firefox with 10-15 tabs open alongside microsoft teams, office, safari, and several other apps running on a 10 year old mac mini with 8gb of ram and I don't run into any slowdowns. Is there anything using up all your CPU time? A stuck process perhaps? When was the last time you restarted chrome? Maybe there is a memory leak if you've had it open for weeks and/or months without a restart.
 
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CubeHacker said:
Something doesn't sound right to me. I frequently run firefox with 10-15 tabs open alongside microsoft teams, office, safari, and several other apps running on a 10 year old mac mini with 8gb of ram and I don't run into any slowdowns. Is there anything using up all your CPU time? A stuck process perhaps? When was the last time you restarted chrome? Maybe there is a memory leak if you've had it open for weeks and/or months without a restart.
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Chrome is the culprit. It's using at minimum of 4GB based on the activity monitor.
 
Try opening Spotify on Chrome instead of standalone to prevent Spotify from running it's own browser (Electron).
 
Switch to safari or firefox and forget about the problems.
Or keep fewer tabs open, each open tab is a application that lives in memory.
 
Try uninstalling and then reinstalling Chrome. There was something wrong with my install that was causing a major slowdown. Fixed it right away.
 
HiVolt said:
Have you tried Edge? It can use chrome plugins and uses the chromium engine so compatibility should be the same, but its supposed to be more lightweight.
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thanks ill give that a shot

sinoka56 said:
Try opening Spotify on Chrome instead of standalone to prevent Spotify from running it's own browser (Electron).
Click to expand...
thanks an interesting tip. ill give that a try

Mr. Awesome said:
There is your problem, good sir.
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the best chrome extension i ever used would put tabs to sleep if you didn't use them for a period of time - it was great. And then the maker of the extension sold and the new owners turned it into malware.

CubeHacker said:
Something doesn't sound right to me. I frequently run firefox with 10-15 tabs open alongside microsoft teams, office, safari, and several other apps running on a 10 year old mac mini with 8gb of ram and I don't run into any slowdowns. Is there anything using up all your CPU time? A stuck process perhaps? When was the last time you restarted chrome? Maybe there is a memory leak if you've had it open for weeks and/or months without a restart.
Click to expand...
these days i am restarting chrome once a week or so. is there an easy way to identify a stuck process?
 
Many sites now use various analizers, etc., this is a huge amount of meaningless constantly running code that monitors any user action. Many of these processes are the main consumers of memory.
 
i recommend to regularly kill any Chrome tab that starts using over 1 GB (kill it in Activity Monitor).
 
CubeHacker said:
Something doesn't sound right to me. I frequently run firefox with 10-15 tabs open alongside microsoft teams, office, safari, and several other apps running on a 10 year old mac mini with 8gb of ram and I don't run into any slowdowns. Is there anything using up all your CPU time? A stuck process perhaps? When was the last time you restarted chrome? Maybe there is a memory leak if you've had it open for weeks and/or months without a restart.
Click to expand...
This is why I switched away from Chrome and started using Firefox a few years ago. Chrome is a memory gulper.

If you don't strictly need Chrome (or only need it for specific things), I suggest using Firefox. I find it to be an excellent browser for my needs and is generally much more efficient than Chrome with respect to RAM usage.
 
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Soba said:
This is why I switched away from Chrome and started using Firefox a few years ago. Chrome is a memory gulper.

If you don't strictly need Chrome (or only need it for specific things), I suggest using Firefox. I find it to be an excellent browser for my needs and is generally much more efficient than Chrome with respect to RAM usage.
Click to expand...

Firefox introduced a major issue several years ago: slow scrolling. Up until then Firefox was my main browser. This slow scrolling issue made me switch to Chrome (and later Edge). Scrolling in Firefox feels like the mouse tracking speed suddenly dropped by several points.

Although it's possible that this issue isn't that important for many users... Time to resubmit this bug to Mozilla.
 
zevrix said:
Firefox introduced a major issue several years ago: slow scrolling. Up until then Firefox was my main browser. This slow scrolling issue made me switch to Chrome (and later Edge). Scrolling in Firefox feels like the mouse tracking speed suddenly dropped by several points.

Although it's possible that this issue isn't that important for many users... Time to resubmit this bug to Mozilla.
Click to expand...

You sure that's a thing still?

I have Firefox open right now alongside safari -- same page open on both -- scrolling is identical
 
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Interesting...

The issue on Firefox is definitely here for me (as it's been through the years on all macOS versions and various Macs).

Scrolling a page in Safari is very fast - it just zips through. Scrolling the same page in Firefox is like scrolling in glue.
 
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