Flash Player Eating Up CPU, Bogging Down System

I wouldn't even bother re-installing 10.6, setting up a new admin account or any other solution that has been offered. I believe the problem is Safari 4. Try using Camino and you'll see that it doesn't use up half the CPU. It's not a fault with 10.6 either as I remember the same issue under 10.5.

You'll just have to wait along with the rest of us for Apple to address this issue.

I think the problem is because now with Snow Leopard and Safari 4 the Flash player runs as a separate process, I think you can try comparing with Firefox, I did and got this result:

Flash plugin version: 10,0,32,18 (last one updated form Adobe site)

- Firefox 3.0.13 running a flash site with video streaming and some basic 3d:
CPU usage around 75%
(I think 75% CPU for a flash site using streaming video and basic 3d is more or less normal)


- Safari 4.0.3 running same site:
CPU Safari process around 20%
CPU Flash plugin around 85%

There is some increment on CPU usage on total, maybe due to the fact that there are two separate processes? I suppose both Firefox and Safari uses the same plugin, it's not really two difference codes.

In a way is good now is split in two processes so Safari gets more stable, but bit worried the Flash plugin as separate process can eat too much CPU.


Jose.

As state earlier on this thread, the problem is not with OS X and not even with Snow Leopard. The problem is and always has been with Adobe's Flash plugin.

Those of us who have used tools like iStat menus or other resource-monitoring tools have known for a while now that even with Leopard, Flash is a resource hog and will keep the CPUS running hot even if it's something simple like leaving a browser window idle on a web page with a Flash "enhanced" banner advertisement. It's even worse actually on Linux systems, and in some cases is completely unusable. It's not so bad on Windows, but can still kick up a lot of CPU cycles.

Unfortunately,t he only options are to complain to Adobe about their horribly bloated code, and in the meantime either try and discourage web developers from using Flash, or try to uninstall it.

Same thing here. Updated to 10.6.1, didn't help. I can't leave my MacBook with a Safari session open anymore, if it has any Flash-based content, it will heat up the CPU, start up the fans and they will run like crazy until Flash sessions are finished. It doesn't matter if the Flash movie is completely stopped, it will eat up CPU cycles like crazy. I thought 10.6.1 was supposed to fix that, but it didn't. If it's Adobe's fault, please Adobe, FIX IT!

I contacted Adobe support and told them about the problem, and their response was basically, "it's not our problem, other stuff is also hogging lots of CPU in Snow Leopard too", referencing the post elsewhere on here about the Spotlight indexing service hogging CPU. Also, they said that Flash is not officially supported on Snow Leopard yet.

Anyway, I found a fix for this problem, at least temporarily. Install the ClickToFlash plugin. This disables all flash movies until you click on them. It seems the reason for the excessively high CPU isn't watching 1 flash movie, but having many flash instances on one page seems to nuke it: now when I run a Flash video the player plugin only uses around 40% CPU, which is at least better than 150%. I'm guessing that ad banners and so on on the same page stack up and with each instance using 40% itself it pushes things too far.

Also has the nice side effect of effectively blocking those annoying ads that take over the whole page when you accidentally mouse over them 🙂 Anyway, give it a shot and see how you get on.

The same problem.
Is there any other plugins to replace the Adobe one?
The situation seems a bit better under Firefox 3.5.3, but almost one core 80%

The Flash plugin in Safari in OS X 10.6.1 is causing high CPU usage of nearly 100% from the plugin alone. My Macbook Pro fans ran at almost 4000 RPM, and the CPU temperature stayed around 173 degrees F.

After I closed all Safari tabs with webpages using Flash (mostly Facebook Flash ads), the CPU usage dropped to 3% for the plugin. The fans dropped to 1800 RPM, and the CPU temperature dropped to 128 degrees F.

This does not occur in other browsers with Flash plugins in use, like Firefox, Camino, Opera, or Chrome.

I just removed the flash plug -ins an noticed about a 50 degree drop in running temperatures using safari. Using Activity monitor you can see lots of activity involving security for flash being run when the plug-in is active. This past year it has been one thing after another revolving around flash and safari. Mostly Flash crashing safari for me. It wouldn't be such a big deal but flash is everywhere now. I hope that this gets resolved soon. I think I might switch to firefox for a while to see how it performs under snow leopard. Safari has been a problem this year. Way too many crashes.

Thanks for the plugin! Wow it seems amazing doesn't it? I mean, I can make a live performance with a pianos simulation (Truepianos), softsynth (analogue synth emulation) backing and also using a microphone to process my voice (compressor, reverb) with Studio Logic 9 - and only about 15-20% CPU usage on my 4 Gig, 2.66Ghz MBP - only to see some stupid flash banner chew up 100% while not giving me ANY benefit! I'm wondering if Adobe has become anti-apple and put that in to practice? Oh well, I am happy I can shut flash down now!

Cheers

Oh if any one is wondering, I use a fast track ultra sound device (usb 2.0)

Try Opera and se your Flash run with less cpu.

Hey, the click to flash plugin works like a charm, thanks a lot!

But why did they decide to put the flash plugin in a separate process? Because Safari is now 64-bit, probably? (But not Flash, since Adobe seems to be pretty slow with 64-bit coding on the mac...)

Until Snow Leopard, I thought Safari was the best browser for avoiding flash cpu usage: Whenever a flash-infested page was in a background tab, it wouldn't use cpu at all, whereas e.g. Firefox would use a bit. But now it's the worst! 😟

Runs as seperate process for stability reasons-so that when flash crashes it does not bring the entire browser down.

Same thing that Google is doing with their webkit based browser, Chrome.

Even though they are all separate processes, if I have more than one tab with Flash content, Activity Monitor will display "Flash Player" only once and accumulate the CPU usage of all instances of Flash, right?

It is really awkward the way Flash eats up CPU under SL. If I have one single Flash movie running, things are not too ugly. But I start accumulating Flash Player instances, it seems to me that the CPU usage skyrockets exponentially. Try this: Open Sea World's and DisneyWorld's websites and then try to play a movie in YouTube or Vimeo. My poor MacBook sweats to get things done under this "stress"...

Any word from Adobe so far? Apple says it's Adobe's fault and Adobe's pointing fingers at Apple... We'll never get to a solution this way... Let us know if there is anything we could help!

Thanks!

The CPU is fine when you see YouTube in HD only...Have you guys tried that? (With no other plugins) So yes, FLV´s are eating CPU in SL.

Same problem here. New iMac 3Ghz dual core and the "Safari internet plugin" exceeds 100% of the CPU with a single instance of a video on YouTube. This is ridiculous!