6 ms·
Slightly off topic, but fully related. Has anyone ever noticed that when your CPU is spiking on a Mac, simply opening Activity Monitor often brings it in check?
by technotarek 6y ago
Slightly off topic, but fully related. Has anyone ever noticed that when your CPU is spiking on a Mac, simply opening Activity Monitor often brings it in check? Please tell me I haven’t fabricated this correlation! I’ve noticed it on several generations of MBA’s, with the 2020 Intel as the most recent.
- wlesieutre 6y agoI haven't noticed that, but I'd propose an alternate explanation: the amount of time it takes for you to notice a CPU spike, get annoyed by it, and launch task manager ends up being just slightly shorter than the running time of some common CPU spiking tasks.
- asdff 6y agooh yeah, I caught addressbooksync maxing out four cores for about a minute on htop before.
- TENACIOUSANT 6y ago100% this on my rMBP 2015. Almost every time too. I notice my PC will give a similar 'system interrupts' reaction with Task Manager, however.
- nitrogen 6y agoOn Windows some scheduled tasks are scheduled to run whenever the system is idle, and seem to stop running when the system is being used again (e.g. by opening a task manager). Maybe the same is true on Mac. This behavior does make one think of malware. It's frustrating when the core features of an OS thwart user monitoring and control, even if inadvertently.
- mft_ 6y agoYep, many many times on my 2017 MBP. Far too consistently repeatable to be coincidence, IMO.
- rovr138 6y agoIf Activity Monitor runs with a higher priority/niceness, that could explain it
- singron 6y agoI just keep activity monitor open all the time. I've noticed that fan speed significantly lags CPU load, so it's difficult to notice and react in time. The one that gives me the most trouble is mds_store, or the spotlight search indexing process. I disable indexing on basically the whole drive but it still spins up the fans every once in a while.