Video playback causes Mac to start working hard
I can't speak for the time-frame of the issue, because it stopped doing it almost entirely for a pretty long time, but as of an update or two ago my Mac has started working very hard whenever I watch videos in Firefox. This applies to YouTube, Vimeo, Amazon Prime, Netflix. The fans kick up, the computer temp rises a great deal as it gets very loud. Both my laptop and iMac have the same symptoms.
The first time I left Firefox and went to Chrome was for the same reason. I couldn't sit in a room with people and stream anything without jet engines joining the ambient noise level.
Is there a workaround?
All Replies (1)
Hello wdp,
There is a known issue where Mac OS X will have a high energy consumption when using Firefox normally (not necessarily only when playing videos). The bug is rather old and has been worked on over the years: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=930586
You can try some of the troubleshooting steps in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9ix5h3/unreasonably_high_energy_use_on_mac/
Thank you, Josh