Making my M3 Pro scream for Air

[benneknudsen]

Problem

Alcove is using a lot of the CPU and Ram, which made my MacBooks fans spin (First time it happened for me)

There might be a leak, or something else that makes my Macbook run like if I played Crysis back in the day.

Steps to reproduce

Open Alcove
Leave Mac on snooze for a few days.
Open it back up, and noticed the performance of Alcove

Expected behavior

Shouldn't use that much

Menu bar affecting apps

No response

Alcove version

1.2.1

Mac/MacBook model

Macbook Pro M3 Pro

macOS version

15.2

[henrikruscon]

This is an edge case bug caused by the Focus mode feature, I'm still working on finding the reason. If you disable Focus in settings, this will not happen. I understand this is not ideal but works as a temporary fix. Albeit so far it seems people run into it once and then not again, so you're probably safe to continue using it.

[mirth]

I've disabled the focus mode and restarted the app. It worked fine for about a day, and right now it again 100% cpu utilization (note: it loads single core so maybe it another case).

[henrikruscon]

@mirth When you say you disabled focus mode, can you elaborate?

[mirth]

@henrikruscon I've disabled such option in an app. Also I don't use focus mode in macOS.

[henrikruscon]

@mirth And you still got 100% CPU? Interesting. This suggests a second bug. Next time this happens, could you do a sample process of Alcove in Activity Monitor? Would really help to figure out what caused it.

[valaises]

Same issue
No focus mode enabled

[henrikruscon]

I need a sample process of when this happens to figure it out, otherwise I don't know what the cause is. Please take one next time it happens.

[mirth]

Please take one next time it happens.

"Unfortunately" It works fine since new version 1.2.2 :)

[Shadowlight5]

I am experiencing this issue as well, where my Alcove is pegged at 100% CPU. I have Focus Mode off currently, and I restarted Alcove, but I am still seeing the same behavior. I have attached a sample process to this. Hopefully you'll find it helpful!

sampleProcess.txt

[henrikruscon]

This seems to be related to album art being very heavy to process. It would really help if someone could share which album art was causing this at the time so that I can reproduce it.

[henrikruscon]

@Shadowlight5 your issue is 100% related to focus mode, I just checked the sample. When you say you have focus mode disabled, do you mean on your Mac, or in the actual Alcove settings? Because if focus mode is on/off on your Mac is completely irrelevant, the issue is with the logic in Alcove that checks for focus mode, so that's what needs to be disabled.

[Shadowlight5]

@Shadowlight5 your issue is 100% related to focus mode, I just checked the sample. When you say you have focus mode disabled, do you mean on your Mac, or in the actual Alcove settings? Because if focus mode is on/off on your Mac is completely irrelevant, the issue is with the logic in Alcove that checks for focus mode, so that's what needs to be disabled.

Total misunderstanding on my part. I had disabled focus mode on the Mac, not in the Alcove settings. Disabling it inside of Alcove did fix the high cpu. Thank you!

[mirth]

Here is process sample when it 100% cpu for me.

Sample of Alcove.txt

[henrikruscon]

@mirth Your issue is album art too, not focus. I haven't found the reason for this yet. Any idea what you were playing when it happened? would be really helpful to have the album art that caused this.

[mirth]

@henrikruscon To be clear, the first appearing of bad cover "infests" the process to have cpu 100% for any other cover later?
Cause when I'm switching the track the cpu it still loaded.

[henrikruscon]

@mirth Could you elaborate? Does it only use 100% CPU after changing track momentarily and then goes down? Or do you mean the 100% CPU remains no matter which track?

Since I haven't found the actual bug yet I'm assuming one bad album art is affecting the logic to loop forever or nearly forever on it, so in theory it should remain 100% until you close Alcove. So finding the original album art that can reproduce this issue on demand would be ideal, then I could patch it very fast and easily.

[mirth]

@henrikruscon 100% CPU remains no matter which track.

[henrikruscon]

@mirth that confirms the running theory then, we need to find the original album art causing the issue

[henrikruscon]

Ok I found the issue, this will be patched in next release as well (album art bug). Thanks for all your help!