Lightroom Classic on Mac Mini with M1 processor performs poorly

Disable GPU acceleration and see what happens. Since the RAM in the

M1 is shared between system and GPU, if Lightroom is heavily leverage

GPU and needed RAM for that, then it may likely need to swap program

data in favor of GPU RAM needs and when it is done swap back. It

could also mean that unlike the Intel Integrated Graphics, the OS may

not be limiting GPU RAM use on M1.

So, disable GPU acceleration to see what happens.

I have a similar issue 256gb SSD 8gb RAM

I moved from an Acer laptop 8GB DDR4 RAM without issue at all using Lightroom and PS It has been a real pain.

Was on the phone with an Apple Support "Expert" all he did was blame Adobe offered no help at all I have only had the mac for 8 weeks I would seriously consider selling it and going back to windows again but don't want to take a big hit on the money

Next time it will be back to windows again

Lightroom Classic 10.0 and later expects at minimum, a GPU with 2GB of VRAM and prefers one with 4GB. It also prefers 16GB (or more RAM installed). The question is how much RAM is the unified GPU borrowing from the available RAM and is it sufficient for Lightroom. And is Lightroom able to run all 8 cores on the GPU, or is it starving for GPU capacity with all six Nikon images concurrently open, but only driving one or two cores? Unknowns.

My mini is using 5gb plus just on idle I am convinced there is an issue with the memory or the system board

I am quite new to Mac I have to reset it to test it so frustrating as I sold a windows laptop more that capable of doing everything I need to get a Mac left with a headache the Support engineer I got today all he did was point the finger at Adobe I wish I had raised this earlier I could have handed it back and got something else

heyho

My 16GB/512GB M1 mini is running one tab in Firefox 89, and htop in an open Finder window. Htop shows 5.75 GB in use. That is usually what it shows within a GB either way. Historically, Adobe applications were designed to take advantage of selected NVIDIA and some AMD GPU models. I suspect they are still learning how to take advantage of the M1 GPU at this point in time, and Adobe is responsible for the behavior of their applications on the Mac. Apple provides them the development tools to achieve this goal.

I had the same issue. Memory usage is completely broken in Lightroom, especially on 10.3 with M1 native version.

I'm running an M1 MacBook Air 8gb and the memory usage and swap were insane.

LR was using up to 9.5 gig memory and 6.5 gb of swap at times whereas C1 was only using 3gb of memory and 1gb of swap.

I was unable to open any other programs or use safari.

I SWITCHED OFF GPU PROCESSING

Now its comparable to C1 - the memory goes up and down but seems to be quite stable at around 2.8gb and the swap is often at 265mb. A huge difference.

LR is even faster (blazing fast) and my system is now completely usable with 8gb.

Hope this helps...

hans7609 wrote:

Thanks woodmeister50, it looks like it's working.

You're welcome. FWIW, this is not the first time that Adobe products

have had issues with GPU usage with Lightroom or Photoshop and

the solution was disabling the GPU. Over the years the issues have ranged

from poor image rendering to sluggish performance.

Thank you for this I am a newish Mac user how do you  SWITCH OFF GPU PROCESSING on the M1?

In LR go to preferences then select performance and select OFF for GPU processing.

Thank you