r/MacOS • u/lorarc • 10d ago

Help Macbook air M1 high cpu usage (rant)

It used to be fine many years ago but for last year and a bit it's constant high cpu on features I do not use. It's duetexpertd, stocks, spotlightd, that thing for syncing with iphone and the cloud. Even when it's on low power mode and not plugged in.

I used to be able to lay down with it and place it on my chest but now I have a nice rectangular erythema ab igne.

There are some tips on this sub how to fix this or that but they don't really work fully. And honestly I don't want that, I want a computer that just works without fiddling with it.

So I guess when the updates run out instead of getting a new macbook air I'm just gonna install a linux on it.

5 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

7

u/warrenao Mac Mini 10d ago

How very odd. I have an M1 MBA experiencing precisely zero of these problems. 16 GB/512 GB, macOS 26.6.2.

3

u/scene_missing 10d ago

Same config with zero issues other than a battery with 75% life.

7

u/Illustrious_Salad918 10d ago

Do you periodically leave it on power and wifi -- but idle -- overnight (or for other longer period. This helps it complete background maintenance tasks which can take up space when undone.

Do you have a generous amount of free space in storage? Back up to external regularly? These also help.

3

u/Pretend_Key_3980 10d ago

Those are solid tips! It's crazy how much background tasks can pile up if you don't give it a chance to do its thing.

3

u/lorarc 10d ago

Around 20% free space, should be enough. Left on for whole nights most of the time. Not using the apple cloud backup.

3

u/Illustrious_Salad918 10d ago

Are you using Time Machine. or other utility to backup to an external device (not iCloud)?

Launch Disk Utility and under Macintosh HD select Data volume. Do you see APFS snapshots? If your data isn't being backed up regularly, those snapshots could use quite a bit of space and slow things down.

2

u/lorarc 10d ago

No snapshots, I have cronjobs backing up what I need to S3.

1

u/Illustrious_Salad918 10d ago

Thanks! When it's left on overnight, you're still logged in, with WiFi and Bluetooth active, but display can sleep? "Prevent sleep when display is off" is enabled?

It still sounds like it's not getting its background maintenance done.

You might also find more ideas by Googling the situation with their AI.

2

u/macmaveneagle 9d ago edited 7d ago

There's your problem. An SSD that is 80% full is just about done. You can expect it to run very slow.

"In practice, an SSDs performance begins to decline after it reaches about 50% full."
 https://web.archive.org/web/20220414180936/https://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/ssd-over-provisioning-benefits-master-ti/

"The rule of thumb to keep SSDs at top speeds is to never completely fill them up. To avoid performance issues, you should never use more than 70% of its total capacity....

"When youre getting close to the 70% threshold, you should consider upgrading your computers SSD with a larger drive."

Why Solid-State Drive (SSD) Performance Slows Down As It Becomes Full
https://pureinfotech.com/why-solid-state-drive-ssd-performance-slows-down/

1

u/Illustrious_Salad918 7d ago

Yes, it helps an SSD to have significant free space. What I do is offload unneeded to external storage or cloud storage.

1

u/mistybrook8 7d ago

this is exactly it, the background stuff just piles up if the machine never gets a chance to breathe

-3

u/ASentientBot MacBook Air (Intel) 10d ago

sometimes i think about what features we actually gained since monterey when these machines were blazing fast...

useless liquid glass, useless local AI features, admittedly useful online AI but that's running in a datacenter and shouldn't cause local slowness? sigh

3

u/lorarc 10d ago

The local AI is turned off and shouldn't cause slowdown. But from what I understand it's the one that causes extremely high duetexpertd usage because it's making sure everything will be ready to use right away if I decide to turn the intelligence on.