{"id":31017,"date":"2020-12-14T15:44:37","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T20:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=31017"},"modified":"2021-02-22T15:58:53","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T20:58:53","slug":"chrome-updater-may-cause-mac-slowness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/14\/chrome-updater-may-cause-mac-slowness\/","title":{"rendered":"Chrome Updater May Cause Mac Slowness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Loren Brichter<\/a> (tweet<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Google Chrome installs something called Keystone on your computer, which nefariously hides itself from Activity Monitor and makes your whole computer slow even when Chrome isn’t running. Deleting Chrome and Keystone makes your computer way, way faster, all the time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve not seen this problem on any of the Macs I administer. And what’s alleged doesn’t seem very likely to me, except that it’s being reported by Loren Brichter<\/em>. But the response indicates that some people are seeing an improvement, so I hope that Google will investigate. Maybe an OS bug is being triggered. Or maybe people are confusing the effects of restarting their Mac (as Brichter’s instructions suggest) and removing Chrome (a known memory hog) with the effects of removing the Keystone updater itself.<\/p>\n\n

I’m also not<\/a> convinced<\/a> that Keystone “hides itself from Activity Monitor” or that there’s anything nefarious<\/a> going on.<\/p>\n\n

Guilherme Rambo<\/a>:<\/p>\n

As you can see from the comparison above, with Chrome installed, the WindowServer process used about 50s of CPU during the test window. Without Chrome and its updater installed, it used about 49s. I don’t see this as a confirmation of the problem, given that the difference is negligible (way below what would cause visible performance issues).<\/p>\n

Apart from that, the entire claim that a process which runs once per hour would cause a completely unrelated system service to have high CPU usage is wild. WindowServer is responsible for rendering the macOS UI to the screen, it spends its time in the CGXUpdateDisplay<\/code> method, rendering CALayers, a task that has absolutely nothing to do with anything a software update checker (with no UI) would be doing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

See also:<\/p>\n