#Google Chrome Extensions Install Chrome Apps

Google Chrome Extensions Install Chrome Apps

For macOS users, however, it looks like you're going to have to find another browser until Apple and Google work this out. If you have a lot of bookmarks in Chrome which sync across devices or rely heavily on Google apps (which tend to work better in Chrome than Safari or Firefox) it looks like you're in for a bumpy ride. As an administrator, you can automatically install Chrome apps and extensions on.Picked up by excellent investigative tech site PiunikaWeb, Google has confirmed that Google Chrome is suffering from severe graphical glitches on macOS (and MacBooks, in particular) with many of the webвЂ™s most popular sites refusing to render.

What piqued my interest was the technical side of this story, and some questions that I thought of while I was reading LorenвЂ™s report. I do have it installed because some things that I do online require it, but my browser of choice has always been Safari. Many users have reported that this does work and that after removing Google Chrome from their machines, everything got a lot faster.Let me preface this by making it very clear that IвЂ™m not a fan of Google Chrome. This weekend, developer Loren Brichter released a website claiming that Google Chrome for Mac вЂ” or more specifically its auto-update mechanism вЂ” was causing the WindowServer process on macOS to constantly have high CPU usage, damaging the performance of macOS, even on high-end machines.The website includes information on how to completely get rid of Chrome and its updater from your Mac to get your performance back, and went as far as calling it вЂњmalwareвЂќ (that word has since been removed). The response conflicts with the statements from Google Chrome engineers (below) which placed the blame squarely on Apple (a faulty graphics card driver was thought to be a potential cause).

The other one, вЂњKeystone XPC ServiceвЂќ is started only when a Google app wants to check for updates itself, on demand. Launchd is the daemon responsible for spawning processes on macOS, and a launchd property list is basically a configuration file that tells launchd how it is supposed to treat a given service.In the case of the Google Chrome updater, it registers two services, which are backed by the same binary, located at ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.The вЂњKeystone User AgentвЂќ service has a StartInterval set to a value of 3623 seconds, so it will run roughly once per hour to check for updates. When does the updater process run and what does it do?GoogleвЂ™s Keystone service, just like any other service-type apps and processes that run on a Mac, registers itself with the system by employing a launchd property list. I donвЂ™t see why GoogleвЂ™s Keystone updater would have to do this, and some quick static analysis of its binaries hasnвЂ™t revealed any such tactic. The only practical way I found to do this was to monitor the system for running processes and if Activity Monitor is found, terminate my process so that the user wonвЂ™t see it in Activity Monitor.

The machine was plugged into an external display, no other apps were actively doing anything other than basic background tasks during the tests and I also left caffeinate running to prevent the machine from sleeping.Using Instruments, which lets you observe software metrics such as CPU usage over time, I recorded two sessions: One with Google Chrome installed and another one with Google Chrome and the updater services uninstalled. The tests were performed on a 2019 16вЂќ MacBook Pro with a Core i9 processor and 16GB of RAM. Is the Google Chrome updater actually the cause of this WindowServer high CPU usage that people are seeing?This was the main question I set out to answer during my tests. I have been able to see it in Activity Monitor while it is actually running, in which case it will appear as вЂњGoogle Software Update.вЂќNote that this basic research is by no means confirmation that this piece of software doesnвЂ™t do anything potentially nefarious, it just means that in the limited time that I had to look into it, I didnвЂ™t find anything alarming. It seems to handle things such as uploading crash reports if any are available, as well as checking for updates of GoogleвЂ™s apps, such as Chrome.

This is more common in computers than youвЂ™d think.В Another one is Confirmation Bias: You hate Google and Google Chrome (hey, not a fan either, we can be friends), and you see a story that matches your perception of the software, so you instinctively believe it.Another thing that could be at play here is that the instructions on LorenвЂ™s website tell you to reboot the machine after performing the steps described, but that is not necessary in order to uninstall GoogleвЂ™s software updater. One of them is the Placebo Effect: You have a problem, you do something that someone told you should fix the problem, and then you feel like the problem was fixed. Why are people assuming itвЂ™s Chrome slowing down their Mac performance?As to why people are perceiving this problem and its solution, I can think of a few possibilities. WindowServer is responsible for rendering the macOS UI to the screen, it spends its time in the CGXUpdateDisplay method, rendering CALayers, a task that has absolutely nothing to do with anything a software update checker (with no UI) would be doing. I donвЂ™t see this as a confirmation of the problem, given that the difference is negligible (way below what would cause visible performance issues).Apart from that, the entire claim that a process which runs once per hour would cause a completely unrelated system service to have high CPU usage is wild. Without Chrome and its updater installed, it used about 49s.

I did that because a computer thatвЂ™s just been rebooted will always feel faster than one thatвЂ™s been running for weeks, and I needed to eliminate that variable from my tests.If you still feel like Google Chrome is slowing down your Mac performance, by all means, go ahead and remove it, I recommend Safari instead.

Google Chrome Extensions For Mac