Megathread: For users seeing high CPU spikes/usage

Aha I think that cosmetic filtering flag did fix it

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Mac OS X 10.13.6

Brave is up to date

[Version 1.5.115 Chromium: 80.0.3987.149 (Official Build) (64-bit)]

Crazy CPU, up to 350% before update on one very simple website whilst a YouTube page was open.

YouTube pages would stop responding, mouseovers would register, i.e. cursor changes but controls totally unresponsive for long periods but sometimes control returns.

After update nothing has improved and in fact whilst trying to capture a screen, I had a pop-up saying that the page was not responding but it disappeared just as I was trying to capture it and the video played but the CPU for all pages was 0% except that one which was slightly >100%.

I also had a problem in the last few days that most YouTube videos suddenly would not play at all (I got a black playback screen with an error). I tested disabling all YouTube/video related extensions, all of which have been installed and running for months without issue and found that it was caused by AutoplayStopper which I disabled. Iā€™m not saying that this is necessarily related but the problems began at roughly the same time and maybe there could be something common.

Dear Support,

I have tried the tips that Brave Support has offered such as use hardware acceleration when available. This did not fix the overload on CPU, so I deleted Brave. At the time I deleted Brave I was using macOS Catalina version 10.15.3. on the date 3/24/20

Then I installed macOS Catalina 10.15.4 on the date of 3/24/20 then re-installed Brave and opened the website that was causing me issue ā€“ https://login.exeterlms.com/ (Woz-U)

Finally, I opened Task Manager and noticed the problem did NOT stop.

@Derek,
Did you try changing the flag suggested in a previous reply above?

@Mattches

I tried the suggestion as mentioned and noticed no difference, so 100%+ CPU usage.

For the issue I, and some others have with the BAT Ledger pegging CPU constantly any more thoughts or ideas to troubleshoot?

A new profile does not have the issue but it would seem to defeat the purpose to lose all the BAT earned to fix the problem. Is there some way to reset the Ledger service somehow while maintaining the BAT? Or even to better profile/isolate what is wrong. I wouldnā€™t mind losing the BAT even IF it was in service of a permanent solution. I donā€™t like doing it if the problem could reappear for me and others.

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@Mattches any chance of further investigation, progress, suggestions on the BAT Ledger Service CPU pegging issue as Iā€™ve asked above. Disabling or enabling hardware acceleration did not affect. Extensions donā€™t seem involved. The custom cosmetic filtering flag noted above did not help.

A new profile does not have the issue, so something in the profile is at issue. But losing BAT among other things whenever this crops up seems like a punt of a workaround. Iā€™m happy to do more digging with some guidance to narrow things down more if I can. Anyone involved with the BAT Ledger Service I could work with?

Iā€™m getting the following spikes.

Also, itā€™s preventing me from dragging the window away from one monitor to another.

Iā€™m also seeing the Brave processes running when the program isnā€™t open.

@pinc,
In this context, when we say task manager, weā€™re referring to your browser task manager, as opposed to your OSā€™s task manager. You can view this by going to Menu --> More tools --> Task manager

I too have been experiencing random CPU spikes from Brave that occur every 15-30 minutes. Usually I would go from 0.2% CPU usage to 50% usage. I normal experienced these spikes during periods of idle or video streaming.

After enabling brave://flags/#brave-adblock-cosmetic-filtering I saw a noticeable performance boost of about 15% less average memory and CPU usage but I was still seeing CPU spikes randomly. Next I disabled all my extensions and the spikes went away. I started 1 by 1 introducing my extensions back and I think the culprit was an extension called ā€œFlash Video Downloaderā€.

I will continue to monitor and will update if anything changes but if you are experiencing this behavior try disabling your extensions especially video related ones.

@Blassphemy,
Thank you for the detailed report! Appreciate the feedback and I will have the team look into the Flash Video Downloader extension and what may be causing the conflict.

I can confirm that CPU spikes have something to do with browser extensions. Disabling ClearUrls and HTTPS Everywhere helped. No more CPU spikes and browser freezes.

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It maxes 1 core as soon as it starts. Even idle. Looking forward to an update since I like brave, but have been unable to use it for a while now because of this bug. Iā€™ve tried reporting it but had my old account flagged and frozen/removed?

No rush, take your time, Chrome+Adblock works fine.

I donā€™t have the problem. I donā€™t know if this will help or not but I run Lasso and it controls cpu use by spreading the workload over all cores.
If those of you with 100%+ cpu use have a drop by using the free program it might help them narrow down the problem,

PS: I currently run 30+ tabs because of crappy memory in my brain matter.


I tried changing the flag but it didnā€™t really make a difference.

Hello, I need help . My pc is getting crazy with brave Version 1.8.95 Chromium: 81.0.4044.138 , almost 6 months using it everyday and still there is not a fix for the high use of pc . Check the pic , Im just with 2 windows , and the task manager says very high use , just 2 windows?? . Also sometimes the videos of youtube are slow , the browser crash many times at least 3 times per week . Whatā€™s going on ? . I did everything that you mentioned , i enabled the cosmetic filter , disable the hardware acceleration and nothing , no change . My pc is core i7 , ram 8 gv , nvidia 1050ti so its not my pc . I need help !


I have a Macbook with MacOS 10.15. Iā€™ve been using Brave for a while now and this is the second time Iā€™ve noticed high CPU usage with a new Brave build. The latest build 1.8.96 seems to have high usage with streaming sites mainly. So I decided to check if the problem is with the nightly build 1.10.54 and I see lower CPU usage on the nightly build. These 2 builds have the same settings and extensions.

Hereā€™s the Main Brave build:

Hereā€™s the Nightly Build:

There doesnā€™t look like a big difference but this difference determines if the fans are blowing or not. Iā€™ll stick with the nightly build for now. Hopefully the nightly doesnā€™t break my cpu also.

VersiĆ³n 1.8.90
Ubuntu 20.04

The first place (BTC price) is a GoCharting.com chart

Version 1.8.90
Windows 10

The first place (BTC price) is a GoCharting.com chart

Hi,
For solution read the strong text only.
I have also experienced this issue with CPU consumption spikes. It happened when browsing using Brave in Linux Mint 19.3. Every spike lasted from 1 to 5 seconds roughly. During this period computer was completely frozen! Every spike was usually represented by extreme increase in consumption of one of the CPU core (out of 8 cores in my case - see the pictures). These spikes came sometime one in every 20 seconds and sometime one in every couple minutes. Especially when switching tabs or opening/refreshing more complex websites like market charts at tradingview.com or Youtube. Very annoying.
Anyway after trying many recommended solutions (including disabling extensions or enabling cosmetic filtering) only what has seemed to work for me was to disable hardware acceleration at brave://settings/system (hamburger menu > additional settings > system > disable ā€œUse hardware acceleration when availableā€ > Relaunch).
So far so good. But there are still ā€œmicrospikesā€ but these are probably related to the Linux itself because it happens also when the Brave is closed. And these much less bothering spikes manifest them-self by disrupting audio playback for a moment (by repeating last microseconds of audio during half second or so). I did not find solution for this yet. But the main problem is solved so far.
But back to original issue. Here are some graphs of CPU consumption during the problematic spikes (in Linux System Monitor):

The usual ones:

The long ones:

When disabled ā€œUse hardware acceleration when availableā€ :ok_hand::


In the last one you can see only one small spike but this happens in Firefox too.

Brave version:

Pain in the ass :slight_smile: Coming from Windows to Linux and this is only one of many issues I deal with (other are no Brave related).