Ubuntu 19.04 high cpu use

gnome-shell cpu-load 19.04

5,187

The new version of gnome-shell is not compatible with some extensions. In particular those trying to show systray, such as "TopIcons Plus" are not working well.

Disable extensions (one-by-one?) to see if this reduces CPU usage.

To do this, install the gnome-tweaks package.

Open tweaks, check the extensions tab on the left, and disable extensions on the right (shown below, POP_OS, but should be similar/identical in other flavors of Ubuntu):

An alternative to TopIcons Plus which seems to catch most of the systray devices is "KStatusNotifierItem/AppIndicator Support"

5,187

Charles Green

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Charles Green over 1 year

I have high cpu use in Ubuntu 19.04, and my screen seems laggy.

Watching top I see gnome-shell running about 50% very often.
- Admin almost 5 years
  
  I'm having the same problem even when I deactivate all the extensions ... this is particularly annoying as I'm on a laptop and it makes the fans spin up all the time and reduces baterry lmife ...
PatKilg almost 5 years

Wow! I can toggle TopIcons on and off and watch gnome-shell CPU use go from ~10% of a core to 99%.
Charles Green almost 5 years

@ZachBloomquist You will notice here that users of 'TopIcons Redux' are in fact suffering from this bug, on Gnome shell 3.32
Charles Green almost 5 years

@ZachBloomquist It will be great if 3.32.1 has fixed the issue - the version of gnome shell in the Ubuntu repositories is still 3.32.0
Zach Bloomquist almost 5 years

@CharlesGreen you're right, it's still broken, the issue has returned after sleeping/waking the computer
Zach Bloomquist almost 5 years

Here is a comment that tells you how to temporarily patch the bug until a new GNOME version is released: gitlab.com/pop-planet/TopIcons-Redux/issues/12#note_16651049‌3
Charles Green almost 5 years

@ZachBloomquist I'll give that a shot in a VM - have you tried it yet?
Zach Bloomquist almost 5 years

@CharlesGreen I have, it does seem to help somewhat - my laptop fans are no longer running at 100% all the time. gnome-shell still uses a decent chunk of CPU but it's not pegged to 100% all the time, which IIRC is how it was before this bug
Charles Green almost 5 years

@ZachBloomquist I ran this in my VM and it does seem to fix the problem that I encountered. My concern is that this is basically added in as a hack, and it's up to me as the OP, to watch for changes to Gnome-Shell, and revert the fix as required.
Charles Green almost 5 years

@ZachBloomquist Currently I'm using "KStatusNotifierItem/AppIndicator Support" for moving icons to the top - there's only one app that is giving me trouble (Liferea) and it's really not much of an issue for me.
Zach Bloomquist almost 5 years

Just checking back in, 3.32.2 does seem to fix the issue and it's available from apt.