1000hz polling rate on macOS Big Sur

Seems like last night's update mitigated this issue. At least for me, with GHUB I can set my mouse to 1000Hz and the animations are fluid. There is, however, still a significant CPU spike when using the higher polling rate. I am sticking to 125Hz.

if it's not a mouse made by apple then apple does not make the drivers for it, if you did not install the driver from the manufactorer such as logitech or razer or whatever then it's likely using a generic one size fit all lowest common denominator driver

maybe the driver did not support big sur so is not running, maybe this require you to go to the manufacturer website to get a driver which does, or maybe they are working on a driver or maybe they have chosen not to support big sur at all

without you providing the name of the mouse manufacturer, then I can't find their website and drivers for the mouse in question

Can confirm this problem's existence.

Happens to me with my Corsair Harpoon RGB at 1000hz polling rate.

Updated to Big Sur via Mac App Store, iCUE was installed before updating.

Switching to lower polling rate seems to reduce stuttering a bit, but not completely.

Hi, I have the exact same problem with my Logitech mouse running at 1000hz. The only way to make it smooth is to set it at 125hz. I never had this issue with previous versions of macOS, it started with Big Sur.

Same here, with razer Abyssus.

In my case I have a physical switch to change between 1000hz and 125hz, and I can reproduce the same problem just by flicking the switch.

It actually caused me to think that my external monitor was the problem, because undocking my macbook air, I saw no issues. I was almost certain it was a problem with my CPU overheating, or GPU not being capable of driving my external display. I was thinking about sending my unit back to have Catalina reinstalled.

This problem should be addressed as soon as humanly possible, because the cause is not obvious or apparent, and there is no reason to suspect the mouse polling rate is the cause of this, because the pointer itself is quite smooth, just the animations are janky.

I can confirm, 1000Hz completely destroys the overall system performance by a HUGE margin. Open up Activity Monitor, start moving your mouse around, and you'll see WindowServer hitting the CPU at 100%. What the problem is? WindowServer has *high* usage when moving the MacBook Air's trackpad as well, or a 125Hz non-gaming mouse, but not as much to have a noticeable performance drop, but still enough to cause the fans to start spinning, and the battery to go downhill. This is completely something Apple needs to fix. I've submitted enough info and video proof on the Apple Feedback Assistant, and awaiting response.

Funny thing: I can't install Razer Synapse to lower my polling rate on my Razer mouse until this gets resolved, because Big Sur won't allow RazerHid.kext to load up. Whitelisting Razer's TeamID, *does* seem to allow the kext to install, but won't load, so Razer Synapse won't detect the mouse to lower it's polling rate.

Like gchamon mentioned, I also thought this was related to my external monitor. While my 2017 Air is hooked up to to my monitor and mouse, moving windows and hovering over the dock results in WindowServer hammering the CPU. While disconnected, no visible issues.

For reference the mouse I'm using is the SteelSeries Rival 106. I was able to reduce the polling rate by downloading the SteelSeries Engine utility - Changing it from the default 1000hz to 125hz improved performance significantly as others have said.

Unfortunately mouse movement feels more slippery as a result. Hopefully this is fixed soon.

This is happening to me too, I had an old Logitech G502 and upgraded to macOS Big Sur. I started having the problem so I thought it was the mouse. Then I got my new mouse, Logitech G Pro, and I still have the same problem. I used software to find out what was the problem and it is the Polling rate. 500hz works fine for me, but 1000hz get my mac to around 5 FPS. Please fix this

Glad I'm not the only one who is experiencing this. I just bought a renewed 2015 iMac and immediately was freaked out by the mouse ever so slightly lagging and was hesitant to even settle in, as my one and only SSD failure a couple years ago began with similar slight lagging. Tried multiple wired and wireless mice to no avail. Frustrated, I reformatted last weekend in the midst of the icloud outage, so I was temporarily forced to be on an older macOS and the mouse seemed to work fine. Thats when it dawned on me it might just be Big Sur and not the SSD.

Neither of Logitech's mac mouse apps recognize my wireless M185, is there another way to change the poling rate?

Same here, with a Logitech mouse.

Reducing polling rate improves situation substantially, but does not solve it.