Macbook Air M1 laggy animations

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Level 1

7 points

Macbook Air M1 laggy animations

Hi, I've bought a new Macbook Air M1 a week ago and I've noticed slight lag from desktop applications and chrome browser. This computer is primarily my work tool for programming so I don't have many random apps installed, only the ones downloaded from official websites and appropriate versions like macos arm if available. Lagging occurs when scrolling on google chrome and when using image carousels on google chrome. Also lagging occurs on desktop applications when scrolling chat on Slack channels. Slack and Visual Studio Code also crashed two times randomly. I've also encountered lag when minimizing apps like Spotify for example. All this lag occurs like the animations are not 60fps, more like 10, also not always but 1 out of 10 times. I've also checked activity monitor to check memory and CPU/GPU usage and memory is never full, also the CPU and GPU are barely used. I've also tried reseting the system and running startup diagnostics but no luck. Also I tried clearing all caches and cookies, disabling hardware acceleration and reinstalling apps but still no luck. Any idea what might help?

Specs:

Macbook Air M1 (8c CPU and 7c GPU, 8GB, 256GB version)

Monterey 12.2.1

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.2

Posted on Feb 14, 2022 8:21 AM

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Answer 1

ryane77

Community Specialist

Feb 15, 2022 8:24 AM in response to blekso

Hi there blekso,

We appreciate you posting in Apple Support Communities, and we'll be happy to help. It looks like you're seeing some lag when using your MacBook Air M1, and you've done quite a bit of troubleshooting already.

To double-check one point you mentioned, when you say you reset the system, what steps did you follow?

To narrow this down, we recommend two tests. First, create a new administrator account and see if the issue occurs there: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac

Next, test in safe mode to help rule out possible third-party software issues: How to use safe mode on your Mac

After you test in safe mode, click Apple menu () > Restart to get back to normal, and let us know the results.

Kind regards.

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Answer 2

ryane77

Community Specialist

Feb 15, 2022 1:46 PM in response to blekso

blekso,

We appreciate those details. Were you able to try safe mode or testing in a new user account yet? Safe mode in particular would be a helpful test in the situation you describe.

Cheers.

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Answer 3

Feb 25, 2022 3:50 AM in response to blekso

I have the exact same issue with my two MacBook M1's. This is unacceptable. It alleviates for a couple of minutes when i reboot them, but i don't want to reboot my MacBooks all the time.

Nothing helped. Reinstalling macOS, Updating to Monterey, downgrading from Monterey back to Big Sur... same issue.

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Answer 4

blekso Author

Level 1

7 points

Feb 15, 2022 1:36 PM in response to ryane77

Hi ryane77,

thanks for a fast response.

I did a clean Monterey install with bootable usb drive and even though I had no third party apps installed, nor any extensions on browser, Chrome still sometimes had choppy animations when scrolling and when sliding images on some carousels. I've also witnessed Spotify choppy animations when minimizing it. Also Slack is still having choppy scrolling. Chrome is installed from their universal installed, Slack is downloaded from the app store and Spotify from their webpage. From what I can tell, only these three apps create this problems, Safari on the other hand works perfectly but I'm way too used to Chrome to switch to anything else. Only logical explanation from what I can tell is that these apps are still not perfectly optimized to work flawlessly like they should on M1 Mac. I'm a bit disappointed since I though a clean install would fix this issues for my Macbook.

Anyways if You think of anything else I could try please let me know.

Regards,

Mihael.

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Macbook Air M1 laggy animations

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