I like using Brave but the cpu/memory consumption is ruining my mac’s battery.
I have all the usual options activated for Brave to save power, limit tab activities, I checked extensions, but can’t seem to find exactly the problem. I’m about to uninstall it from all my computers and have my company do the same, as there’s no actual transparency of actual energy consumption and all the services running and how disable them.
I keep my MacBook Pro plugged in, as often as I can.
MacBook Pro. MacOS Sonoma. 2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5. BB v1.80.125 Chromium: 138.0.7204.184 (Official Build) (x86_64). Global Shields UP. Global JavaScript Allowed. Global Cookes Allowed (3rd Party Cookies: Blocked). No extensions from the Internet. No Anti-Virus. Using Private Windows.
In the following screenshot, "Preventing Sl . . . " is Preventing Sleep.
I don’t see how this is related, especially since keeping the macbook plugged will ruin your battery. No extension goes without saying but would make the browser useless for me.
Maybe there’s a way to make all extension on limited access?
If that was true, sales would significantly decline. I currently have 4 MacBook Pros: 2008, 2010, 2013, 2020. I have changed the battery in the 2008 twice, and same for the 2010. The 2013 battery (used) is still in great shape. The 2020 spent a lot of time running on the battery - previous owner, and I will have to change it, but it putts along well enough and probably will get to the point in the future when I can change it.
The displayed screenshots that I provided above, are for comparison - showing more info. You wrote about “Insane memory … consumption”. I do not use my MacBook Pro 2020 for gaming, but I would expect that online games and their demand for CPU, energy, and memory . . . would use more than what my 2020 MacBook Pro uses. Your stats are not dramatic, relative to my machine’s relative inactivity.
Now, some users place a lot of burdens on their computer, yet they expect the computer to perform well. I do not have that expectation; I expect workload to have an impact. Interesting, that my “Energy Impact” is more than yours - mine 2.6, yours 1.8.
View energy consumption in Activity Monitor on Mac
Your “12 hr Power” is much higher than mine, because you have been running with a greater load; but again, I have my 2020 MBP plugged in ← I would naturally do that, for significant workloading. And again, you have the Energy Impact advantage.
I keep a cable in the car. I require the gear, iPhone, MBP, to be prepared. If flying, I keep a cable handy.
My 2020 MBP has only 16 GB of RAM; and I imagine that is less than your installation’s RAM GB value. Again, your screenshot indicates gaming, and I would expect that your RAM usage would be much higher.
PS. I also work to keep the computers cool. I cut a mouse pad into 1.5 x 1.5 inch squares, and place a square under each corner of the MBP, in order to elevate the machine a bit, and allow more air underneath it.
I would be worried about heat, more than I would be worried about memory usage; and energy consumption reflects demand, workload.
I use the Macs Fan Control application, in order to keep the MBPs cool. I have been using the application for several years.
Youcine Brasil (https://baixaryoucine.com/) runs smoothly without insane memory or energy consumption—perfect for efficient streaming on any device.
This is literally a recent Macbook, which should be more optimised.
I think I’m going to abandon and ask for a change from Brave in our park
I also use Microsoft Edge, which is also a Chromium browser. You might try it, in order to compare the Task Managers. (For anti-ads and other protection, I included the uBlock Origin plug-in for Microsoft Edge.)
PS. Where BB does not perform well, I use any of:
May interest, MacRumors forum posts re ‘12 hr Power’:
‘https://forums.macrumors.com/search/5135103/?q=12+hr+power&o=relevance’
@Ugle in terms of seeing the services running, it appears you have found Brave’s task manager which shows each active process.
In terms of battery usage I’m not quite sure what you’re looking at in that regard.
There are some extra tools I suppose you could use to check memory usage and all. For example, brave://system would show something like below:
Then there’s also brave://histograms/ but I’m not sure if you are aware of everything there and how to interpret it. But you would have sets of data there for power consumption and a lot of other details. For example:
You could use brave://tracing/ which lets you run performance traces and see frame rendering, CPU wakeups, etc. You can record a session and see what’s eating power. But this is primarily meant for developers and likely wouldn’t be easy to understand.
For example, a small part of what I see from running trace for a short period:
For memory usage you can also check brave://process-internals. This will be a breakdown of the things you see in Brave’s Task Manager as well as extra details. For example:
This can help you check which tabs are using active renderer processes. You may also be able to combine this with data from brave://system to cross-check process IDs to see which are using the most energy or memory.
@Ugle the key point here is understanding what’s actually running and whether your expectations match how Chromium-based browsers are designed.
Chromium browsers, including Brave, run every tab and extension as a separate process. Each tab is its own process, and the same goes for every extension and many internal browser tasks. This design improves stability and security, but it can lead to higher memory and CPU usage on the surface.
There’s a common principle in computing that unused RAM is wasted RAM. Chromium-based browsers intentionally make use of available memory to ensure fast and reliable performance. That includes keeping processes active so that switching tabs or actions feels instant. However, the browser does put inactive tabs to sleep and adjusts usage dynamically. It tries to balance performance without overloading your system.
[quote=“Ugle, post:3, topic:636754”]
Maybe there’s a way to make all extension on limited access?
[/quote]
Yes, there is. Go to brave://extensions and click Details on the extension you want to limit. This opens a page where you’ll see:
Allow this extension to read and change all your data on websites you visit:
You’ll have three options:
If you change it to On Click or choose specific sites, it can reduce the extension’s impact on memory, CPU, and battery.
Also, it’s worth recognizing that many users report battery issues on MacBooks in general. One random example would be https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255511501
Thanks, those are lots of information but hard to read or find the common thing I’m looking for is what is making brave consume way too much energy
Have experienced high CPU and energy drain from Brave on occasion on my Android tablet, so this issue may go further than OS or device. I think it may have to do with the hidden instance of Brave when no windows of Brave are open. Doing a Force Stop on Brave halts the issues.
I just discovered that Brave actually prevents my Mac from going to sleep.
The TL:DR:
Brave is designed to use as much RAM as available (unused RAM is wasted RAM), and will automatically scale down RAM usage when other applications need more.
Brave is designed to keep as many tabs and plugins active for that snappy, responsive feeling, but will sleep tabs if necessary
Especially on-line games will be very memory and cpu demanding.
The only thing that shouldn’t be happening in everything I saw in this thread is Brave blocking sleep, but even that might be a specific tab or extension, TBF…
May interest - App Tamer:
‘https://stclairsoft.com/AppTamer/index.html’
Optimize your Apple Silicon Mac
App Tamer can take special advantage of Apple Silicon powered Macs, which have two different types of processor cores. Use it to automatically run busy background apps on your processor’s efficiency cores to save power, leaving the performance cores for the apps you want to run fastest.
Hi these are lots of option, NONE of which address the concern of many user. WHERE is the informations as to what tab, utility or extension is using energy?
