Guide: How to solve Yosemite memory leaks and CPU usage

I'm not aware of any additional beta programs. As a developer I see (and partially use) the betas Apple sends prior to any public releases. Regarding the NDA I don't think Apple will sue me if I tell that it fixes an issue. Of course, if it introduces one I would not discuss it here.

Did you do the testing against any consideration: did Apple pay you in cash or kind? Else, there shouldn't be any contractual relationship between you and Apple; hence, nothing can bar you from enjoying your right enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and thereafter: independence of expression! In any case, why is Apple scared that their beta tester might leak something? Was the OS such scary? That it is buggy and is behaves like a Trojan with effectively attacking using the pattern "Denial of Service" is quite apparent. What is not understandable is why should the manufacturers include a trojan in their own OS!

Hello you all.

I'm desperate, I mean really.

I ran maverick on my actual MBP 15" retina (late 2013) 2,3 GHz Intel Core i7 / 16Gb ram / 1Tb SSD without any problem.

I used to run the app memory clean only some days when 7 apps like LR, photoshop, Muse, itunes, Firefox (with many open tabs), FCP X...where running for hours. Except that, my 16Gb ram was always enough.

Then I install yosemite, and then, troubles began to appear....see this screen capture below.

I only have firefox, mail, spamsieve, reeder 2 and the activity monitor open...see how much ram left! (in the menu bar)

I'm a pro photographer and now since I installed yosemite I can't spend an hour without launching memory clean, 3, 4 times.

Then I tried ALL THE TIPS kindly left in the original post by Luis_Mercado, but see....

It's obvious, my MBP retina (late 2013) became UNSUABLE the day I installed yosemite.

If any kind soul can help, I'll be happy.

Thanks anyone for your help.

regards

Sadly all resets did not helped much (MPB 15 Mid 2010).

WindowServer is eating CPU as mad (yeah, I do have external monitor attached) and more and more my MBP is not usable for anything ...

After suffering trough Mavericks bugs and slowdowns for me this is the last straw (well, new GUI design direction with iOS and OSX too) ... after almost 20 years of dedicated Apple usage I'm dropping it ... we are all paying big premium to have computers who "Just Work" ... well that time is now long gone and its time to move on -- for me as the web developer to some of the linux based systems with much more horsepower for less $$ and freedom to choose GUI I like and not dreading what the next update will bring. OS(X) was the reason I was paying Mac prices, now compared to .9 and .10 even Windows starts to look good.

I wish you luck if you decide to go the linux route - The desktop environments make further strides every release, and they are great as long as you stay within the "preferred" path for window managers, desktop environments, etc. But if you think OSX is bad about changing things from release to release, you haven't spent much time in the world of the Linux desktop. You will see the same changes from major release to major release - and sure, you can work outside of the distro and install your own desktop environment / window manager, but then good luck with updates. I've gone through that cycle many many times... It starts taking so much tinkering that I waste to much time on it.

Every .0 release will have issues, and nobody is forcing a switch to Yosemite, or even Mavericks. You could always run OSX Lion/Mountain Lion - Only recently did Apple stop supplying security updates for 10.6, so surely Mountain Lion has some life left in it.

As far as your WindowServer slowdowns -- Do you have any third party tray icons in the upper right at all?

I'm still experiencing slowdowns if I have tunnelblick open, and that is the ONLY third party app I use that has a tray icon at this point. If I quit and reopen tunnelblick, then it all works fast again. I did end up disabling translucency reducing transparency again, as it seems to make things more manageable when the slowdowns start - but the slowdowns are definitely tied to the tray.

you're right the icons do push your windowserver cpu higher, but so do other interface animations. I can reliably force window server to crash if you screenshare / ARD to that mac for an extended period of time.

I think that the issue here is window server is getting taxed by what should be simple tasks, an accumulation of several tasks will push window server so hard that it causes the system to become unstable

The idea that we have to avoid tray icons in order to have smooth performance is unacceptable. Apple needs to follow this thread at the very least. The internal testing group must be doing nothing other than basic Apple tasks. They can't pretend that people don't run third party apps!

I don't think anyone is suggesting we do this indefinitely .. but it is a temporary workaround that can help until the update is released.. .0 versions will always have issues like this, most people wait until .3 or .4 before upgrading if they can, only people that don't have a choice are new customers

I think you are right there - I've been concentrating on the tray icons because it's such a comically large difference for what shouldn't be an issue at all, but it's certainly not the entire problem. I still see times where things seem sluggish -- Although nowhere near the degree I did before killing the tray apps.

@mysticmcj - It would be interesting to see if it makes a difference if you set Tunnelblick to not put its icon near the Spotlight icon (on the "Appearance" panel of Tunnelblick's "VPN Details…" window). Tunnelblick uses two different system calls to place the icon, depending on that setting.

Also, is there any evidence of a memory leak when you have Tunnelblick running? Or evidence that it is Tunnelblick itself (and not the status bar system) that is causing the slowdown? I'm the Tunnelblick developer, so please report any such problems to the Tunnelblick Discussion Group.

@jkbull - You know, I've been running it NOT near the spotlight icon because I didn't like it there. I'll try switching it back over there, that's an interesting thought. I'll follow up...

I see no evidence of tunnelblick causing the slowdown at this point - It's all windowserver lag. I was certainly getting a larger slowdown from other apps that used the systray... I'll keep an eye out, though.

Thank you for making an awesome product and for following this issue!

On my old iMac I have been having this problem increasingly. It was fine in the first few days after upgrading ... but it has become worse and worse.

I today followed the advice to:

Reduce Transparency

Automatically Hide the Dock

This has fixed 99% of the problem for me. I hope 10.10.1 fixing this issue.

What solved windowserver in my case is just creating a new fresh account and migrating to that account.

However this doesn't fix the memory leak issue like Safari leaking to 6GB for no reason.

Hi Luis, I followed all the steps, but didn't seem to work 😟. My mac continues to overheat, and my battery doesn't last more than an hour and half. I opened the activity monitor, and it shows me that "dock" is using 99%, and "loginwindow" is also using 99% of my CPU. Do you know what could I do?

Sure, nobody forced me to upgrade and I'm still kicking myself for doing it 😊

.0 release problems or not this is not some minor problem -- some apps crashing, OK that's "normal", making the whole system almost unusable and overheating it to death (and considering GFX RAM position on MBP 15 possible hardware problem) that's a major issue and there is nothing done about it ATM (no official workarounds, hotfixes, not even a apology).

If I'm forced to re-install the OS and my whole setup then I'll choose something where I'll have much more control. IMHO, for the (web) developer, Windows is not great platform (toolchain can be a PITA to setup and lacking of options), OSX (was) ideal middle ground with a great GUI design (well, IMHO, had a great GUI design) and *nix under the hood, so that leaves me Linux as only option -- I may need to work around to massage it to my preference but at least I can pick and choose what I want more freely and, as I'm using it in one shape or form from the Slack 1.0 release, carrying over my setup trough upgrades is not more work (after initial setup) than "recovery" after new OSX release (.9 & .10).

In the end, I'll probably bite the bullet and downgrade, but in the next hardware upgrade cycle getting a Mac will not be my first choice anymore (OSX was the main reason for that).