Pedro Santos

I've noticed before that having the Max application opened, even with no patch loaded was having a significant effect on my 2018 15" MacBook Pro's battery life.

Checking the Energy tab of Activity Monitor, I've noticed that:

Is there anything that can be done towards this problem? Besides having an adverse effect on battery autonomy, the MacBook Pro gets hotter, the fans may start spinning louder and sooner, and the computer component's life may be decreased.

Hi everyone.
I've noticed before that having the Max application opened, even with no patch loaded was having a significant effect on my 2018 15" MacBook Pro's battery life.

When initially opened, with no patches loaded Max doesn't report the use of the High-Performance (discrete) GPU and, when using only MIDI/MSP or even Jitter matrices (CPU), the configuration is maintained. Nice.

As soon as a patch incuding Jitter/OpenGL objects is loaded, Activity Monitor reports that Max is using the high-performance (discrete) GPU. Great!

After closing the Jitter/OpenGL patch, Max maintains the high-performance GPU flag indefinitely, even if subsequent opened patches don't make any use of OpenGL resources, or even if there are no patches loaded. Only quitting and restarting Max returns it to the initial configuration.

As anyone noticed it before?

Thanks in advance.


Hi everyone.
I've noticed before that having the Max application opened, even with no patch loaded was having a significant effect on my 201

max-battery-usage-on-macos

I haven't looked especially at the GPU usage, but even with no patch open, it's my understanding that the Max scheduler is doing something, thus drawing on the battery. I have the habit of quitting Max when on battery and not using it.

When it comes to the GPU switch, it would be interesting to know if the wrong behavior is on Max or on the OS.

I haven't looked especially at the GPU usage, but even with no patch open, it's my understanding that the Max scheduler is doing something, thus drawing on the battery. I have the habit of quitting Max when on battery and not using it.
When it comes to the GPU switch, it would be interesting to know if the wrong behavior is on Max or on the OS.

Hi Jean-Francois. Yes, I've noticed it too and have the same habit as you. The thing is, besides tat residual CPU consumption of Max when opened, it forces the MacBook Pro to keep using the dedicated graphics card, even if it isn't actually needed, draining the battery much faster...

Regarding the eventual culprit, I can't be sure, but I think it's Max because of the following:

It's only when the first jitter object is used (e.g, jit.world) that the GPU flag changes. If you open the Max console, you notice the "gl2/gl3 engine loaded" message. If you close the patch and do it again, that message doesn't repeat, meaning that, once loaded, Max never "frees" the OpenGL resources. I might be wrong, though...

Now, even if we assume it is Max's fault, it might be difficult or impossible to fix its behaviour without complex changes, I don't know...

Hi Jean-Francois. Yes, I've noticed it too and have the same habit as you. The thing is, besides tat residual CPU consumption of Max when opened, it forces the MacBook Pro to keep using the dedicated graphics card, even if it isn't actually needed, draining the battery much faster...
Regarding the eventual culprit, I can't be sure, but I think it's Max because of the following:
It's only when the first jitter object is used (e.g, jit.world) that the GPU flag changes. If you open the Max console, you notice the "gl2/gl3 engine loaded" message. If you close the patch and do it again, that message doesn't repeat, meaning that, once loaded, Max never "frees" the OpenGL resources. I might be wrong, though...

hi I used max with ppooll and a jitter patch for audio reactive visuals with live sound. played 5h straight in the night and my battery wouldn't charge anymore on a Mac M1 , and the CPU load started to get crazy high  (50-60%) , the FPS on the jitter patch very low (10) .

I'm assuming max is draining a lot of battery power and that on a low battery doesn't work properly anymore . 

this morning with full battery it was all normal again.

Max battery usage on MacOS