I am new here - have tried to find this issue, but haven’t located a thread for it.
I am having a persistent problem with the Brave Browser Helper (Renderer) consuming 100% of my cpu. I am using
I have turned off Hardware Acceleration, but that has not fixed the problem.
Any other suggestions?
I have having the exact same problem. The only way I can fix it is to go into activity monitor and manually stop the Brave Helper.
I’ve only recently downloaded Brave browser and I love it. However, this bug will make it unusable for my purposes.
I’ve discovered that the problem gets much worse on when I have certain tabs open.
Wall Street Journal is one of them that causes the spike: https://www.wsj.com/
I have been using Brave for a few months now, and just upgraded to a new MacBook Pro with 8 cores and 32 Gig of ram. I have a TON of browser tabs open (easily 150) in 9 windows total at the moment. But for the last few days I have suddenly had my fan going at full blast when Brave is running. Checking process monitor it is clear that it was a Brave Helper process that was pegging CPU at 100%!!! I think this started when I was watching a couple of youtube videos, but can’t be certain. I ended up downloading an extension to put tabs to sleep, which didn’t help at all. I had already closed the youtube tabs (before installing extension) that I had open, with no improvement.
The only thing that worked was killing the Brave helper process. Not sure of next steps, but I am happy with Brave, and am fully behind the project and its vision, so I am truly hoping there is a solution to this problem (looks like it has been around for a while judging by some of the hits I got in my Google searches).
A couple of additional notes:
Brave version 0.70.122
I am using Mac OS Catalina
I had only two extensions installed and active (Last-Pass and Ublock Origin)
Lastpass MAY HAVE BEEN the cause, though I can’t be sure, and it is not new to my workflow.
Same with me. Happens with a few websites, the most recent being Nextdoor.com. Must be a Mac issue?
Mac mini (mid2011)
macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra
Brave Version 0.70.122 Chromium: 78.0.3904.87 (Official Build) (64-bit)
I am having similar issues. For example loading a new webpage from a new tab takes forever, but once it is loaded it works fine.
MacBook Pro 2018
mojave 10.14.6
Same issue here - 2015 MacBook Pro, Mojave. Brave Browser Helper using 100% CPU, computer running crazy hot, and fans blazing.
I had to force-quit Brave, and 15 minutes later, the process was still running and using 100% CPU. I had to kill the process in order to stop it from running.
For anyone who’s seeing this type of resource consumption on their system, can you confirm whether or not you’ve tried disabling Hardware Acceleration and whether or not it helped the issue?
@Mattches I tried disabling the hardware acceleration.
At first the browser stopped loading any pages. I just got a 
in the tab, and a blank screen if I tried to load a URL from the location bar. I relaunched the app twice and it started working normally.
After that, I noticed that this process’ CPU usage would spike anywhere between 50 and 100% from just scrolling up and down a page. If it’s a page that’s lazy-loading content and images, it would be closer to 100%. I stopped scrolling and the CPU usage dropped down to normal (6-9%) within seconds.
I re-enabled hardware acceleration, and the problem remained the same, except it would open as many as four Brave Browser Helper (Renderer) processes concurrently, and they’d each be around 50% CPU usage. While I’ve been typing this and doing nothing else, it dropped down to one of these instances of the process; it’s at 20-26% CPU while typing in this field. I hope this helps.
Yes, I disabled the hardware accelerator, but the problem persisted for certain websites (i.e. WSJ online). I also identified an issue with Adobe Creative Cloud. After I deleted that, I have not had the accelerator issue with Brave.
@chronicpete,
Would you mind trying to create a new browser profile and test to see if Brave takes just as many resources?
Hi, I have the same on both my Macbook’s, it doesnt’ seem profile related. It occurs mostly after a certain period of inactivity (like keeping Brave running overnight)
So after a few months of not seeing my machine do this any more, it suddenly came back today. Today the source seemed to be two Youtube tabs that I was watching yesterday, and had left opened paused. The “Brave Browser Helper(GPU)” process was over the top on CPU usage, so I killed it, and another one took over for it. I did this again with the same result. So in the end I was able to get the system under control by bookmarking the videos for now, and closing the tabs.
Specs, Macbook Pro 16, 64 GB ram and 8 Core-i9. One of the contributing factors might be that I use an external monitor that is only HD (as compared to the retina display). The two tabs were on that monitor before I shut down last night, so there may be some problem with the graphics engine in Brave and the two monitors with different resolutions.
I’m experiencing the CPU overload problem again. I just updated with to the latest version, v1.2.42 - and the Renderer has exploded over 100% CPU usage.
Having the same problem.
Macbook Pro, 13 inch, 2019
MacOS 10.15.3.
1.4 GHz Quad Core i5,
8Gb RAM
Experiencing the same issue. I’ve used Brave across multiple platforms over the last year and haven’t noticed this before (though perhaps I just didn’t notice).
Mac Os Sierra, 2017 model 2.8Ghz / 16 GB memory .
I was wondering why my fan was roaring all day today. Checked out activity monitor . THe Brave Browser Helper (Renderer) was using close to 100% cpu. I don’t have that many tabs open, so it appears more particular pages cause the cpu usage to spec due to some rendering stuff. In any case, big fan of browser and BAT but can’t use this version currently due to this.
Can you try disabling Hardware Acceleration in settings to see if this resolves the issue?
You’ll find this in Settings --> Additional Settings --> System --> Hardware Acceleration
I’ve also started experiencing this issue (100% CPU, fan going wild, tabs becoming unusable) after upgrading to the latest version a few days ago. I disabled Hardware Acceleration, but the issue is still occurring. Any other steps to take to try and solve the issue?
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018)
2.6 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7
32 GB RAM
macOS Catalina 10.15.3
Brave Version 1.4.95 Chromium (64-bit)
Same problem with my Mac.
iMac (24-inch, Early 2009)
2,66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
8 Go 1067 MHz DDR3
OS X El Capitan version 10.11.6
There are ongoing reports of the same thing and no response, investigation beyond suggesting disabling plugins or hardware acceleration that don’t work. How does any further investigation get done. I’m a big Brave fan but bordering on having to stop using for the time being b/c can’t afford ensuring Mac is always plugged in or having it run down so quickly b/c constantly pegged.