Affinity Photo 2.1 1790 (RC2) and Ventura 13.3.1: Experiencing relevant Finder's lags

[paolo.limoncelli]

Hi,

I've recently updated to macOS Ventura 13.3.1 and this is my setup

I'm also working on a 27QHD Cintiq with latest drivers

 

Problem description

When Affinity Photo is open, the entire Finder responsiveness drops down, and any simple operation (such as opening folders, minimising, expanding icons..) lags and shows a sort of slow-motion effect... 

Here a video

Painting/Editing experience are fine, only Finder's operations seems to be influenced...

Here you can se the very last RC released, I've CTRL reset it in order to exclude other problems.

Once AP is Open an minimised any operation such as the expanding the "Movies" group on my desktop lags.

Also my cursor goes very slow and tooltips of the Dock lag.

Restoring AP window shows this slow motion effect...

At 1:04 you can see me closing AP (it takes few seconds to happen, few lags...) once it is closed (1:19) things are back to normal speed and responsiveness. 

 

 

 

[Jon P]

Hi @paolo.limoncelli

We've tried this on a couple of Macs running 13.3.1 and haven't been able to reproduce any slowdowns so far.

Can you clarify if this happens on both Designer Beta and Photo Beta, and if it happens on the non beta versions of the apps I can see installed on your machine?

[paolo.limoncelli]

It happens with Photo only, both 2.0.4 and 2.1 RC2

AD and APub are smooth

I've noticed that with AP only the cfprefsd process reaches 82% of CPU

Monitoring this I've noticed that if AP is open it has a low %.

If I interact with Finder (Mission Control, Exposè, minimise and close the APP...) it jumps up to 80%.

Now I'm erasing both 2.0 and 2.1 RC2.

EDIT

Now I've started with a "from scratch" installation of 2.1 RC2 only.

Also I do not have 2.0.4 anymore... The behaviour is still there.

Here the video of AD 2.1 RC2 showing a proper behaviour instead.

 

 

[Jon P]

Interesting that it's Photo only, and the slowdown seems to be coming from, and that a reinstall didn't help.

Can you navigate to ~/Library/Application Support and rename the Affinity Photo 2 Beta folder

Can you then navigate to ~/Library/Preferences and rename the com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2.beta.plist

If you do both of those it will reset your settings (you can rename back to restore them), and I'm curious if that helps.

If it does, sending both that folder and the plist over will be helpful, if not then it may be possible to track what cfprefsd is actually doing to cause the high cpu usage

[paolo.limoncelli]

I've discovered the existence of that process this afternoon... 😅 

Thanks to MattP I have also understood that it should be related with "preferences" maybe?

Will do your procedure as soon as I can... Thanks.

 

 

[paolo.limoncelli]

Hi Jon.

The renaming of those plist files and folders does nothing...

It definitely something dealing with AP because 1.x does the very same... I've tried to track the process cfprefsd

I did these simple tasks:

• open APP
• create new document
• scroll to zoom the document
• minimise window
• enlarge window
• close

The log of AP (any version) produces a 21 MB txt file

The log of AD 2.1 RC2 produces a 385 KB txt file

I'm far from being an expert here, but I guess and it is something dealing with AP only... Acting as Fox Mulder would... 😅

There is a sort of loop, AP writes something (or attempts to..) to the window server temporary folder lots of times...

This loop starts when I interact with AP window.

10:55:19  getattrlist       /Library/Preferences                                                 0.000026   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  access            private/var/folders/zz/{folder name}                                 0.000012   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  mkdir             private/var/folders/zz/{folder name}/T                               0.000006   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  lstat64           te/var/folders/zz/{folder name}/T/TemporaryItems                     0.000011   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fstatat64         te/var/folders/zz/{folder name}/T/TemporaryItems                     0.000010   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  openat            00000000000/T/TemporaryItems/com.apple.windowserver.plist.bKRBvZ9    0.000098   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fchown                                                                                 0.000024   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fchmod                                                                                 0.000017   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  dup                                                                                    0.000002   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fcntl                                                                                  0.000004   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  write                                                                                  0.000047   cfprefsd    
10:55:19    WrData[A]       00000000000/T/TemporaryItems/com.apple.windowserver.plist.bKRBvZ9    0.000168 W cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fsync                                                                                  0.000216   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fchown                                                                                 0.000028   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fchmod                                                                                 0.000016   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  close                                                                                  0.000007   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  renameat          00000000000/T/TemporaryItems/com.apple.windowserver.plist.bKRBvZ9    0.000116   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  close                                                                                  0.000001   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  close                                                                                  0.000046   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  close                                                                                  0.000002   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  open              /Library/Preferences                                                 0.000007   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  openat            [3]/com.apple.windowserver.plist                                     0.000023   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fcntl                                                                                  0.000002   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fstatat64         [3]/com.apple.windowserver.plist                                     0.000007   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fstatat64         [3]/com.apple.windowserver.plist                                     0.000005   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  dup                                                                                    0.000001   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  lseek                                                                                  0.000001   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fstat64                                                                                0.000001   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  read                                                                                   0.000052   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  read                                                                                   0.000001   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  fstat64                                                                                0.000001   cfprefsd    
10:55:19  close                                                                                  0.000001   cfprefsd   

And repeats so many times... Up to make a simple txt as big as 21MB 

In AD this loop appears only few times...

Maybe AP uses a different routine and lacks of privileges/permissions that AD has?

[Jon P]

I assume you followed similar instructions here, so are one step ahead of me, although I was hoping there'd be something a bit more useful in the output

If you ran the command and output it to a text file "sudo fs_usage pid <PID> > output.txt" even if it just looped a lot, do you mind attaching the output? If you can send the log from AD that could be useful too.

Good investigation so far though, it could maybe be permission related but i'd expect some errors, not for it to be stuck looping doing something in the background

[paolo.limoncelli]

Exactly.

I sent both txt logs to @MattP

I also tried to create a new macOS User, use the Safe Mode and nothing changes.

Tried Disk Utility to check errors, cleaned all caches using both OnyX and Disk Doctor Pro.

I also disabled Mission Control, Corners and other stuff...

All apps in my macbook are fine and smooth, only AP (1.10.6, 2.0.4 and 2.1 Beta) has this weird behaviour... Unusable with Ventura... 😔

[paolo.limoncelli]

Hi @JonP

Thanks to @MattP and Andy Tang I've solved in a very curious way.

In Settings > Display changing brightness to 100% and turning "Automatically adjust brightness" OFF...

...wiped the slowness away..

I suggest to report this to Dev, because the correlation is weird...

Also because AP only seems to be affected.

 

Cheers,

Paolo

 

[Jon P]

Thanks for the update, had a chat with Matt about it yesterday and he advised he was helping you troubleshoot it, so glad you got to the bottom of it.

I'll see if I can reproduce the issue and then we can hopefully log/fix it to prevent it happening again.