Overheating Issue on M1 Macbook Air

[ahmetulusoy]

Hi, mba gets hot like crazy while watching youtube videos on vivaldi. It was fine on other chromium based browsers like edge and brave, but with vivaldi it gets hot.

[Chas4]

@ahmetulusoy What video resolution are you watching at?

[ahmetulusoy]

@chas4 1440p

[ahmetulusoy]

@chas4 I just checked gpu usage while playing a 1440p video and it was at 65%. Tried another browser to see the difference and gpu usage was %18.

Here I added video statistics if it helps. Bottom one is from vivaldi and the other one is from safari. I really wanna switch to vivaldi but this bug really bothers me and laptop is getting really hot.

Vivaldi version: 4.1.2369.21 (Stable channel) (arm64)
MacOS version: 11.5.2 (20G95)

[yannisv]

@ahmetulusoy Exactly what happens on my 2017 MacBook Pro as well. Other Chromium browsers (like Edge) run fine.

https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/65428/large-energy-consumption-on-macos-when-playing-videos/4

[ahmetulusoy]

So, it seems video codec is not the issue, the problem is vivaldi helper, gpu usage is getting up to 70% while playing videos. Really annoying and makes the browser unusable, I hope vivaldi team can solve this issue, until then I am gonna use another browser.

[Davaldi]

I think overheating with Vivaldi is generally an issue with M1 MacBooks. My 2020 M1 MacBook Air can get warm if I have three or four tabs open in Vivaldi, especially if these pages have video content embedded. The heating doesn't happen in Safari, Firefox or Chrome. I'm not convinced Vivaldi is that compatible with M1 MacBooks. As a consequence I'll be using an alternative browser on my MacBook Air. If you don't like Safari, Firefox seems to run very well on M1 MacBooks, I'm not the only one to notice this.

[ahmetulusoy]

@davaldi Yeah, I start using ungoogled chromium and it works without any issue, I used brave and firefox for a while and did not have the issue on them too. It happens only when I use Vivaldi. Filed a bug report, I hope they can fix it.

[Davaldi]

@ahmetulusoy said in Overheating Issue on M1 Macbook Air:

@davaldi Yeah, I start using ungoogled chromium and it works without any issue, I used brave and firefox for a while and did not have the issue on them too. It happens only when I use Vivaldi. Filed a bug report, I hope they can fix it.

I'm pretty convinced the main Vivaldi development is aimed at mainstream macOS (non-ARM) and Microsoft operating systems. Newer Mac's and Linux always seem to be plagued with bugs. I've run Vivaldi for six years on Ubuntu and there's never been a time when there hasn't been some problem or other. Vivaldi runs fine on my iMac. I'm guessing the developers just don't have the time and resources.

[yannisv]

@davaldi It is definitely not an ARM-specific issue. Energy consumption is abnormally high on all Macs, compared to any other browser, when watching YouTube. See my post for my 2017 MacBook Pro.

https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/65428/large-energy-consumption-on-macos-when-playing-videos

It's just more easily noticable in MacBooks due to worse cooling than iMacs.

[Davaldi]

@yannisv said in Overheating Issue on M1 Macbook Air:

@davaldi It is definitely not an ARM-specific issue. Energy consumption is abnormally high on all Macs, compared to any other browser, when watching YouTube. See my post for my 2017 MacBook Pro.

https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/65428/large-energy-consumption-on-macos-when-playing-videos

It's just more easily noticable in MacBooks due to worse cooling than iMacs.

I don't know for sure but I'm pretty convinced this is ARM - specific. I have four browsers on both my iMac and my 2020 M1 MacBook Air: Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Vivaldi.

I've deliberately tried the same pages on the Air in each browser. Only Vivaldi makes it get warm. AFAIK this does not happen with my iMac.

It's not the only difference I've noticed.

Although, come to think of it, Vivaldi makes the fan run a lot on my Levono laptop running Ubuntu, especially with embedded video.

Back to Firefox then ...