Slow loading on M1 Macbook Pro

[man-named-zeus]

I’m experiencing repeated spinning beach balls while using Affinity Photo.

I’m on version 1.10.5 and using a 14” M1 MacBook Pro (Monterey 12.3.1).

I don't understand what the issue is. Affinity keeps loading after single actions. For example, select a layer (load), pinch to zoom (load), resize object (load), create group (load).
It’s driving me nuts. At first I thought it was linked to Universal Control when I drag and drop a file from another Mac. But it does seem to resolve even when I switch off the other Mac and restart the Macbook with Affinity.

The file I'm working on is not particularly resource intensive either (1,4 MB) and has 14 layers. File is stored on my Affinity iCloud Drive folder. 

Anyone experiencing this? I didn’t have these kind of issues on my 13” intel MBP. 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, man-named-zeus said:

File is stored on my Affinity iCloud Drive folder. 

Try copying the file to your local drive to work on it, & if you want then copying it back to your cloud drive, overwriting the original.

Affinity works best when the file is locally accessible in part because not all of it is loaded into memory at the same time.

[man-named-zeus]

That seems to have done the trick. I'll keep monitoring it just in case.

[niklaskoelln]

Hi,

I’ve been experiencing the exact same loading hiccups for a while now. Same macOS version, same Affinity version, on M1 Max MacBook Pro 16". Working with documents stored on my local hard drive doesn’t help, the program constantly stops, shows the spinning wheel for 3–4 seconds and then continues. This is very annoying.

Any other ideas?

[v_kyr]

7 hours ago, niklaskoelln said:

I’ve been experiencing the exact same loading hiccups for a while now. Same macOS version, same Affinity version, on M1 Max MacBook Pro 16". Working with documents stored on my local hard drive doesn’t help, the program constantly stops, shows the spinning wheel for 3–4 seconds and then continues. This is very annoying.

Can you inspect those 3–4 seconds loading hiccups memory wise in Activity Monitor? - Meaning do you see a big increase in memory loading there then?

[man-named-zeus]

I've kept monitoring performance over the past few days. Seems that moving the file to the local drive doesn't really help.

At rest Affinity is using 1,25 GB of RAM. In those loading hiccups, the RAM use only goes up to 1,32 GB. Threads remains around 10-11.

Affinity CPU use when idling is between 2% - 34% and in those loading hiccups it goes up to 83%.

[man-named-zeus]

Another factor may be the fact that I use a Magic mouse and keyboard. I have not done extensive testing with just the built-in keyboard and trackpad. But it may be worth mentioning.

[v_kyr]

39 minutes ago, man-named-zeus said:

Another factor may be the fact that I use a Magic mouse and keyboard. I have not done extensive testing with just the built-in keyboard and trackpad. But it may be worth mentioning.

I don't think that this should play any role in this context. - Instead you might want to try out if the following somehow plays any role when loading ...