Heavy resource use on frequent audio device changed messages

[aaronadamsCA]

Two or three times now, BetterDisplay has caused severe slowdown and battery drain over a long period of time.

An app restart resolves the issue each time.

The next time this happens, is there some information I can capture to help you troubleshoot this?

• Version 4.0.4 Build 45613
• macOS 26.0.1 (25A362)
• MacBook Air 13-inch, M3, 2024
• No external displays connected recently, I've been away from my desk

[waydabber]

Hmm. I am not sure what to capture honestly. If you see the app currently using too much energy or CPU usage, you can sample the process in Activity Monitor, but other than that I am not sure what could be done.

What app features are you using? What does the "long period of time" mean in this context? Was the system sleeping or on?

[waydabber]

Hey, I'll close this one as I'd need a bit more info about this, but feel free to comment and then we'll reopen the issue. I'll also look out for other similar reports.

[aaronadamsCA]

@waydabber It happened again! I was able to capture some additional info.

Every 10 seconds, Activity Monitor shows a huge spike in resource usage. Context Switches jumps by about 44K each time, CPU time by about 0.66 seconds. The other numbers change less predictably, and the system call counters are completely maxed out.

I've attached process samples of idle.txt vs. spike.txt.

I basically only use BetterDisplay to get HiDPI + brightness sync on an LG monitor, so I'm only using a small handful of features.

It looks like I haven't even plugged into the LG monitor in 30 days, because BetterDisplay auto-forgot its profile. The laptop sleeps several times a day, gets lots of use otherwise, and is frequently on and off AC power. No USB peripherals.

[waydabber]

Thank you, this was very useful.

It seems like the issue is caused by a constant flood of audioDeviceConfigurationChanged calls from the system. I am not sure why this happens, but I had one report similar to this in the past (sadly can't find it). Are you maybe using any kind of special audio app or driver that might interfere with how things work?

In any case, I will improve things by debouncing this activity (so if there is a constant flood of CoreAudio notifications like this, the app should not follow all them up instantly) and also check whether there is really a change in the audio device or it's a false alarm - and only follow things up if there is. It won't solve the root cause of the problem of having these notifications fired by something (this might be macOS installation/environment specific) but should help with the CPU spike.