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chris4565

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 22, 2018
1,027
486
Hey everyone,

Recently, I have a quite annoying CPU usage problem when browsing YouTube on macOS. It affects BOTH Chrome and Safari. Here are the steps that can replicate the issue in 100% of the cases for me.
  1. Visit YouTube --> CPU usage is normal
  2. Start watching a video --> CPU usage goes up (of course this is normal)
  3. While watching the video click on the YouTube icon or go to your subscriptions --> ISSUE: CPU usage stays up even though no video is playing anymore
Sometimes the issue doesn't happen after 1 video but eventually (basically after repeating steps 2 & 3 a few times) the issue comes up. Interestingly, if I hit cmd+R to reload the page, the CPU usage is normal again.

Is anyone else also having this issue? Thanks in advance!
 

bogdanw

macrumors 603
Mar 10, 2009
5,734
2,765
Thanks for the suggestion but the issue also comes up when NO miniplayer is displayed after I click on the YouTube icon while watching a video.
Exactly what I meant by inconsistent, sometimes Miniplayer runs without showing. More, if you switch fast between Home and Shorts, sometimes the shorts video keeps playing in the background.
 

chris4565

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 22, 2018
1,027
486
Exactly what I meant by inconsistent, sometimes Miniplayer runs without showing. More, if you switch fast between Home and Shorts, sometimes the shorts video keeps playing in the background.
Ah, sorry, that's what you meant. Yeah, maybe that is indeed the issue.
what Mac and RAM?
A 2023 16" MacBook Pro with 16 GB of RAM. It definitely seems like it's some kind of issue with YouTube. I also found someone on Reddit who said this issue started very recently for them (as it also did for me).

Also some more details: Once the CPU usage is "stuck" up there, it stays up the entire time when I browse through YouTube (homepage, search, subs, etc.). The only way to fix it is to cmd+R the page. Then the CPU usage is down to basically 0 again.
 
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