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Macbook M1 Pro terrible lag, beach ball, nearly unusable text feature


samtenpaOG

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Sorry to report this, but upon upgrading my M1 air to the new M1 Pro, updating my Affinity suite, and using the very latest Mac OS, Affinity Photo, my bread and butter app, is now horrendous. The beach ball accompanies nearly everything I do. 

The text feature has a full second lag. This never happened before, which is why I loved the Affinity Apps. Now it is a matter of 1. type in new text box. 2. wait to see if it registers. 3. watch the beach ball. 

Goodness this is hard to work with. When can we expect a fix?

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Hi @samtenpaOG,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums :)

On 11/13/2021 at 7:40 PM, samtenpaOG said:

upon upgrading my M1 air to the new M1 Pro, updating my Affinity suite, and using the very latest Mac OS, Affinity Photo, my bread and butter app, is now horrendous. The beach ball accompanies nearly everything I do. 

We're very sorry to hear this - our developers have identified a change within Monterey whereby the OS is now regularly running code signing checks on the Affinity app / temporary files, which is causing the 'beachball' to appear for certain actions within the app.

This is something we're working closely with Apple to try and resolve, as we understand the impact to our users workflow and offer our sincerest apologies for this.

Our latest beta has a fix for this issue on our side, though as the developers have mentioned within these release notes, we must also await Apple to update this within Monterey to completely solve the issue. You can download the beta from the below link, which is installed alongside the retail version, so that you have 2 different versions of Affinity Photo installed - 

I hope this helps!

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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On 11/13/2021 at 11:40 AM, samtenpaOG said:

Sorry to report this, but upon upgrading my M1 air to the new M1 Pro, updating my Affinity suite, and using the very latest Mac OS, Affinity Photo, my bread and butter app, is now horrendous. The beach ball accompanies nearly everything I do. 

The text feature has a full second lag. This never happened before, which is why I loved the Affinity Apps. Now it is a matter of 1. type in new text box. 2. wait to see if it registers. 3. watch the beach ball. 

Goodness this is hard to work with. When can we expect a fix?

Came to research this as I just bought a new M1pro MacBook Pro and the performance is now terrible in app. Hope an update comes soon

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • Staff

My apologies for the delayed response here @Vasqes as I have been out of the office until today.

Can you please confirm for me:

What version of macOS are you running?

What version of Affinity?

Have you tried our 1.10.5 beta version (linked above)? Does this exhibit the same behaviour?

Many thanks in advance :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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I am running Montery 12.0.1

Affinity 1.10.4

I am also using the beta, which works a little better. 

But both of them seem to have glitches: I am not able to option+drag to duplicate an object like I used to be able to do. 

The beta solved most of the lag, but the glitch I mentioned persists. 

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Many thanks for letting me know!

21 hours ago, samtenpaOG said:

But both of them seem to have glitches: I am not able to option+drag to duplicate an object like I used to be able to do. 

Sorry to hear of the further issue, I've tested this here using both the beta and retail versions and this is working as expected for me - you should also be able to use Command + drag to duplicate an object on the canvas using the Move Tool.

Does this work correctly for you please? :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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  • 3 months later...

I am still experiencing lags with the latest Monterey update 12.3.1 with the "beachball" showing everytime I want to move a group of objects on affinity photo 1.10.5. It seems nothing has been solved since. 

I am using MacBook Pro m1 2020 13 inch.

 

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Hi @Raphys,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums :)

Can you please within the app navigate to Affinity Photo > Preferences > Performance and change the Display option from Metal to OpenGL.

Restart the app as prompted and then try editing this group once again. Does the reduce the frequency of the 'beachball' you're seeing?

Many thanks in advance!

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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  • 1 month later...

I just encountered the same issue on my M1 Mac running Monterey 12.2.1 and AP 1.10.5.

It had been a few weeks since I'd used it for more than resizing an image, and it's putting up a beachball and lagging badly switching layers, especially when dealing with text.

I tried the suggestion above to change the Display preference, but it's non-selectable in the dialog. I tried just checking "Use only integrated GPU" option, but there was no difference so I unchecked it.

Any other helpful suggestions to get it more usable?

Thanks,

 

Markie

Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 11.15.49.png

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19 hours ago, MarkieSee said:

Any other helpful suggestions to get it more usable?

Try running with the Hardware Acceleration: unchecked.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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@OldBruce, thanks for the tip, and I'll give it a try again. I went to uncheck it, and the exact same file that was so laggy previously is now performing fine (no changes). I unchecked Hardware and then OpenGL on, but saw no difference when I restarted the app. 

I've toggled Metal back on and will see if that performance drag happens and then attempt the OpenGL fix to be sure.

Thank you again,

 

M

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For anyone in the thread experiencing beach-balling, it's worth noting that there is currently an issue with variable brightness on M1 MacBooks and I presume M1 iMacs as well—anything that uses a sensor to gradually change the brightness based on lighting conditions. Photo, with its Metal view, queries maximum brightness for HDR purposes, and this causes a bottlenecking issue at the moment when macOS gradually changes the panel brightness.

The solution is to go to System Preferences > Displays and disable "Automatically adjust brightness". Disabling Metal Compute will severely hamper performance—the reason it works for most people is because it also switches the view back to OpenGL, which does not query the brightness as it does not support HDR/EDR views.

The issue will be fixed in the future, but the workaround for now is to disable the automatic brightness adjustment within macOS. Hope that helps!

Product Expert (Affinity Photo) & Product Expert Team Leader

@JamesR_Affinity for tutorial sneak peeks and more
Official Affinity Photo tutorials

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  • 1 month later...

Thank you for the explanation and a possible solution to this issue James.

 

On a other note / off topic..

I just want to thank you for making such excellent tutorials / videos with so much useful information.

Always on point, great tips and tricks and with your personal touch and input too that i find fantastic.

I have watch soo many hours 🙂

I use AP och a daily basis thanks to them.

 

Hope you have a great day and all the best to you! 🎉

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  • 1 month later...
On 5/9/2022 at 12:15 PM, James Ritson said:

For anyone in the thread experiencing beach-balling, it's worth noting that there is currently an issue with variable brightness on M1 MacBooks and I presume M1 iMacs as well—anything that uses a sensor to gradually change the brightness based on lighting conditions. Photo, with its Metal view, queries maximum brightness for HDR purposes, and this causes a bottlenecking issue at the moment when macOS gradually changes the panel brightness.

The solution is to go to System Preferences > Displays and disable "Automatically adjust brightness". Disabling Metal Compute will severely hamper performance—the reason it works for most people is because it also switches the view back to OpenGL, which does not query the brightness as it does not support HDR/EDR views.

The issue will be fixed in the future, but the workaround for now is to disable the automatic brightness adjustment within macOS. Hope that helps!

I tried that it is unchecek auto adjust brightness but lagging continuing but I disable metal compute, enable openGl it worked. İs there any option to fix this as enable metal My model m1 pro 16" Thank you for supporting

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  • 2 months later...
  • Staff

Sorry to hear this @Barrowman!

Have you tried any of the suggestions in the above thread? If so, what have you tried and have you noticed any appreciable differences from these setting changes?

Many thanks in advance :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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