Guide: How to solve Yosemite memory leaks and CPU usage

Lack of preperation.

Yosemite is noticeably faster than Mavericks when installed correctly, some users always get that step wrong.

This is YOUR perception of the situation. I can't tell it's the **** slower than before. Actually it's almost the same on my machine. I have reported a bug for icon animation which slows down WindozeManager (well, there we are) but Apple just replied "can't reproduce". Nice, thanks. I can live with the situation, but telling this a performance increase is simply an insane lie. Also for Safari I sometimes see a BBOD for a couple of seconds (just time for a looong sigh) when I switch back to it after some time. (There are a couple of other things I really don't like about Yosemite but that's a different story.) To sum up: for all those cheers Apple gave itself for Yosemite it's a big, big fail

**** why do those puritan Americans have all those XXX sites and censor words in posts - beep - stupid - beep. The **** above is the opposite of heaven.

I hope it works out for you.

Thanks. I hope for that too. Though I'm not that confident as in the past that Apple will make it :-/

This indeed solved my problem. Feels like a new computer – thanks!

Doesn't solve the problem permanently. Tried it 3 times and problem returned each time.

Here's a thought - maybe Apple SHOULD JUST FRIGGIN' FIX THE PROBLEM rather than everyone having to jump through multiple hoops and try exotic workarounds just so their OS behaves as it's SUPPOSED to. This is a bug that directly effects my productivity and it is therefore costing me time and money. Sure, I suppose I could roll my system back...but I call that an 'exotic workaround' that only Windows users would find acceptable.

I've been using Macs since '86 and historically had great confidence in the quality of Apple software. Unfortunately, it seems those days are loooonnng gone. I'm totally stunned at the rapid drop in software QA at Cupertino. I, and many others, are now very reticent to apply Apple updates because bugs are now the rule rather than the exception (Wow - feels like Microsoft). And this weird, cultish 'we-never-admit-we're-fallible-publicly' routine is getting reeaally old. I mean, seriously - how condescending! Wo do you think we are, Apple? Who do you think YOU are?

Time to clean house??

Cheers

Over It.

I don't think anybody here would disagree with your thoughts, but that's not why we are all here. The forum is provided by Apple as a courtesy to users, but users are the only ones you are communicating with here and finding work-arounds is what we do. If you want to communicate with Apple about this, then you need to visit a different environment. Send Feedback. File Bug Reports. Visit an Apple Genius. Use AppleCare. Those are all proven methods of getting what you want, but soapboxing here is a waste of your time and ours.

Point taken.

I've been using Macs very successfully for almost as long as you (bot not quite!), and I think that there is much truth in what you said. I have no new solutions and am just adding a bit of commiseration; but again these are 'discussions'. I also think your comment and others just go to exemplify the frustration many are feeling with some of the glitches, bugs, etc. that are still affecting Yosemite at this point, and that is worth some discussion. Mac users always feel a greater affinity with their machines not as much for what they are, but for what they allow us to do so quickly, so well and so professionally. When things that don't work as expected in the OS and it affects our work, it's like not getting the most out of a faithful team player. We expect the most and are not happy when we don't get it.

I tried the fix that started this thread and it really didn't do much to help some "pauses" I'm seeing in the OS. I've seen this across different machines of different ages, so I think it must affect a good number of users (across many discussion threads). I'm surprised how many users with new machines and piles of RAM are having stalls, leaks and issues as well. These are issues that I see in my use, but issues I never had in Mavericks or any of the previous recent versions of OS X. It seems to be better with transparency turned off and the uncheck of separate spaces, but I can still see slowdowns at points where the loads on the machines are minimal and there should be no issue (and wasn't' previously). I can only hope the Apple knows about the issues and will address them in a subsequent update. Again that is why it is important to also supply feedback to Apple.

I'm hoping the 10.10.2 release will normalize things for me, but past experience has been that the .3 release was the one where everything would get to working at optimum levels. But nowadays by the time we're at the .5 release we're on the verge of the next major update. I've always been a front line adopter getting the major OS X updates ASAP and applying them (maybe not every machine as a hedge!) right away. In all those big cat adventures as an early adopter, I really never had any issues that I noticed as much as with Yosemite. I think this release may make me a little more reluctant to be on the front lines for future major updates. I think I may just sit back and consider the move later after the first release. I always wondered why users of other platform OS's had no great urge to go to the next one; maybe their previous upgrade experiences were closer to what many are feeling with Yosemite.

I truly anticipated many fewer issues with this release due to the open beta program, and I expected Yosemite to be rather bulletproof. Previously I expected there to be little things in the first release since the OS may not have gotten full exposure in development and testing. But Yosemite had the open beta, so I wonder if these issues were present then or just came into the mix in the gold master. Or were they found late in the beta and were not able to be addressed in the GM?

I think there's a lot of great things to love in Yosemite and am excited about the release; I just want to be able to enjoy it more!

So not quite over it yet...

Most interesting comment.

Almost a week later things are much more stable for me thanks to all the posts here.

I have gone back to App Store and reinstalled the OS over the top of the existing 10.10.1

Stopped using Chrome (the army of google helpers was almost melting down my 10+ tab open workload)

I deleted one piece of malware.

Now my Mac is not running red hot all the time- less 'waits' or BBOD but it is still less than it was...

I now accept that I have a machine that needs more RAM and shut down web browsers when processing photos in Lightroom etc..

Still it seems a step backwards to have to half use my Macbook Pro due to an OS upgrade...

I have a better working life now thanks to the above and all the kind people who devote time and patience to helping out.

Thanks all, Duke

PS Apple- get your show ready before hitting the road!

MacLion wrote:

I've been using Macs very successfully for almost as long as you (bot not quite!), and I think that there is much truth in what you said. I have no new solutions and am just adding a bit of commiseration; but again these are 'discussions'. I also think your comment and others just go to exemplify the frustration many are feeling with some of the glitches, bugs, etc. that are still affecting Yosemite at this point, and that is worth some discussion. Mac users always feel a greater affinity with their machines not as much for what they are, but for what they allow us to do so quickly, so well and so professionally. When things that don't work as expected in the OS and it affects our work, it's like not getting the most out of a faithful team player. We expect the most and are not happy when we don't get it.

I tried the fix that started this thread ...................

I'm hoping the 10.10.2 release will normalize things for me, .................next major update. I've always been a front line adopter getting the major OS X updates ASAP and applying them (maybe not every machine as a hedge!) right away. In all those big cat adventures as an early adopter, I really never had any issues .........

I truly anticipated many fewer issues with this release due to the open beta program........

I think there's a lot of great things to love in Yosemite and am excited about the release; I just want to be able to enjoy it more!

So not quite over it yet...

I still am an early adapter, and Yosemite is absolutely great, as great and maybe soon greater than any of them. It is fast, intuitive and simply works across our limited range of Macs. We had minor things, wrt to some PC connections running various MS and Linux OS's, but solved them soon enough. The bugs in 10.10.0 were also quickly addressed.

Having the same issue. Tried all the various fixes provided. Apple software is going downhill. It's been worst and worst with each iteration. On the other side, i'm hearing good feedback from Windows users. So I jumped in, just ordered this bad boy: http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-13-9343-laptop/pd?oc=dncwt5131s

If apple wants my business back, it better take my problems seriously.

I find that if you do an upgrade, stupid legacy setting are prone to fail on the new operating system. Did you do a clean install or update? we had ALL SORTS of problems until we did clean installs. worked like a charm. This operating system is much faster, and more intuitive, as someone above said. If you can't get it tower, take it in and get a tech to get it running smoothly. These systems are getting more and more complex. Sometimes its best to let someone else do it.

I love how it runs on my MBP and my tower!

Good luck with that Dell.

Having purchased the Dell (wonderful machine) I no longer depended on the iMac and was able to do a clean reinstallation of OS X Yosemite on it. Surprisingly, after the reinstallation, I no longer have any issues with the window manager. The interface is buttery smooth for 5 days now.

I'm keeping the Dell though. To me it seems that Apple software has been going downhill lately. What happened with "it just works" mantra? I remember 2.5 years ago when I purchased my macbook air I used to enjoy uptime of 2 months.

Apple really needs to improve its software. The improvements they make each year are minor (imho) and they just don't justify the problems the software is having. Since I also need to renew my phone plan and hardware I was inclined to ditch iPhone and go Android. However now that Yosemite seems quite stable on my iMac, I might stick with Apple for 2 more years, give them one more chance.

I tried a clean install also and it didn't really make any difference. This fix has helped me a couple of times but it's never lasted very long.

However, upgrading to 10.10.2 yesterday fixed all the performance issues I've been having. I have a working computer again. And about time. I think Apple realized they couldn't afford another botched release and worked hard to make this one work. However, this is the release that should have been 10.10.0.

If you can't or don't want to upgrade to 10.10.2 for some reason, the fix that worked best for me other than this was to reduce transparency in the Accessibility System Preferences.