Description of the issue:
The main “Browser” process starts using 100% CPU after the browser has been running for some time (a day or two). It’s NOT some tab misbehaving that can be closed, it’s the main process called “Browser”:
Due to this unfortunate naming it’s virtually impossible to find this issue in Google. I have no idea how to debug this. The only temporary solution is to restart the browser, and when CPU is hogged like this, this process stays alive for a few minutes after I exit. Sometimes this process stays so long I have to manually kill it. It doesn’t prevent running another instance of Brave, I just don’t like my CPU fans making noise.
It seems to be triggered by tab switch, the main process CPU usage shoots up to 100-120% and after some time it goes back down. I had a lot of tabs before but I lost them after a power outage, now I have fewer and it still happens. Still, it shouldn’t matter because it’s not the current tab that causes it, it’s switching to another tab. And even if I switch back and close that tab, this issue doesn’t go away until after a minute or two.
I tried disabling all extensions, disabling hardware acceleration, using memory saver so it suspends most tabs that aren’t used. It doesn’t change anything. I really don’t want to reset my profile and would rather find the real issue so that it can be fixed.
I tried profiling the offending process with perf but there are no debug symbols to actually find the culprit.
I’m a software developer and I work on Linux, I’m well versed in various low level tooling so if there’s any way to provide meaningful data I’ll be glad to do it. This issue has been bugging me for well over a year.
How can this issue be reproduced?
- Have multiple tabs open (about 80)
- Keep the browser running for a few days
- Just use it as usual, switch tabs, see the “browser” process using the CPU a lot even when nothing is happening
Expected result:
There shouldn’t be that much CPU load when the user does nothing and nothing is happening on the screen. All Brave processes should terminate upon exit without any leftovers.
Brave Version( check About Brave):
Version 1.67.134 Chromium: 126.0.6478.186 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Additional Information:
Running Debian Testing amd64, 128 GB RAM, 3090Ti RTX, i9-12900kf. NVIDIA driver v555.58, Awesome WM v4.3