New Spotify on Mac consumes lots of CPU

[yuryzholobov]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Macbook Pro late 2016

Operating System

Big Sur 11.2.3

My Question or Issue

Spotify started consuming CPU like crazy recently. Even when not playing the Renderer process consumes ~50%. I also have on a lower end Windows device and it consumes 75% even when not playing. Both Windows device and Mac show the new UI (Search in sidebar, new layouts for playlists etc) - maybe the perf problems are related to those? Version on Mac is 1.1.56.595.g2d2da0de-a

[5c2d2c08312819b]

might be related to https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Mac/Spotify-scans-my-hdd-for-audio-files/td-p/5188280  

Open finder and type "activity monitor" -> select "disk" to check if Spotify reads a lot of data from your hdd.  

If this is the case see if my workaround described in the issue above fixes the behaviour. 

[yuryzholobov]

No, it does not use disk when it's not playing. But still consumes lots of CPU

[Novy]

Hey there @yuryzholobov,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community.

We'd first recommend performing a clean reinstall of the app. This is often an overlooked step, but it can be helpful to get rid of any corrupted files that might be causing issues.

If this doesn't do the trick, could you send over a screenshot where we can take a look at what you're seeing from your end? You can attach it using the Insert Photos option in the post editor. 

Keep us posted.

[yuryzholobov]

Attached are two screenshots - for the app idle and playing a song.

[Mihail]

Hey @yuryzholobov,

Thanks for getting back to us.

Could you try disabling Hardware Acceleration from the Advanced Settings menu of the app and see if that makes a difference? Also, have you imported any local files? If not, it's a good idea to follow the suggestion of @5c2d2c08312819b and untick all lines bellow Settings>Local Files>Show songs from and then unticking both Show songs from and Local Files.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get on.

[yuryzholobov]

I disabled HWAcceleration. It's not in Advanced Settings though, but in OS  main "Spotify menu". Also The "Show local files" option is OFF and I never turned it on.

Attached are results of idle and playing states without HW acceleration. 

[Novy]

Hi @yuryzholobov, 

Thanks for your reply. 

Could you send over the exact Spotify version you're currently running so we can take a deeper look into this? 

We'll keep an eye out for your reply. 

[yuryzholobov]

1.1.57.443.ga029a6c4-a

[Eni]

Hey @yuryzholobov, 

Thanks for getting back in touch. 

Just to confirm, when you reinstalled the app, did you follow these specific steps? This process is more thorough than the usual one. 

Also, could you try log out and then log back in twice? We know this sounds odd, but it's how the app forces a cache refresh. 

We'll be on the lookout.

[yuryzholobov]

Yes, I did advanced uninstall steps. By the way, step 10 for Mac is wrong:

Enter “Spotify” in the search field, hit “Search: Library” and delete all files that appear

This search finds all files from other apps that contain spotify either in name or in content. You should not tell users to delete random files unrelated to Spotify app from their computer. My search returns thousands of files from other apps' subfolders of ~/Library

I did the logout>login>logout>login and the numbers on Activity Monitor does not see, to change. Mind you, those total ~30-120% of CPU usage by Spotify processes is in virtual CPUs. Physical CPU usage of Spotify processes is 5-10%. By the way, if I run web player I get around 30% lower CPU usage (by browser processes).

For comparison: Spotify virtual CPU usage is 30-120% total, while Apple Music app while playing is ~10% (9% coreaudiod + 1% music.app)

[Eni]

Hi there @yuryzholobov, 

Thanks for getting back in touch. 

Would you mind letting us know if the same happens using a different PC?

Additionally, we suggest that you restart your PC in Safe mode to check if that makes the difference.

We'll be waiting for your reply.