Community-edition: Rambox requires High performance GPU

[IceHismxx]

Steps to reproduce

1. Run Rambox on OSX and look at activity monitor to see that the dedicated GPU in use.

Expected behavior

Computer should not switch to dedicated GPU which saps a lot of battery for just a all-in-one messaging app.

Actual behavior

Process switches dedicated GPU on
You can see it in this image here
https://imgroll.net/i/hqJEV

ENVIRONMENT

The only services I am using right now is WhatsApp, Messenger, Irccloud, and Tweetdeck.

Rambox: v0.4.5

OS: MacOS

Arch: x64

[saenzramiro]

Try to disable the hardware acceleration in the Preferences.

[joaomlneto]

Using the gfxCardStatus utility, it's the process "Rambox Helper" that forces the OS to use the discrete graphics.

I can confirm disabling the hardware acceleration in preferences solves the discrete graphics-switching problem.

macOS 10.12.2, Rambox 0.5.2

[saenzramiro]

Thanks!

[ideologysec]

I'm curious as to why this was closed; disabling hardware acceleration shouldn't even be necessary except for troubleshooting (IMHO), let alone be considered a "fix."

It's entirely possible to create OpenGL contexts that don't require the dedicated GPU at all, and an application can tell macOS to explicitly NOT use the dedicated GPU.

Some good information about this HERE.

[cbenhagen]

@saenzramiro please reopen

[joaomlneto]

My temporary fix for this is to manually kill -9 <rambox helper PID>" after starting RamBox.
I don't really know if this causes any instability in the application, but works good enough for me.

For some reason using pkill -9 "Rambox Helper" crashes the application...

[saenzramiro]

Seems to be a Chromium/Electron bug. Please see here: https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/4380

Try to add --disable-gpu like THIS comment indicates.

[ideologysec]

would love to see this added into Rambox; from my experience it is Slack alone that is causing the issues -- it's when a Slack channel is loaded that the discrete GPU kicks in. Any possibility of adding that flag to Rambox? Or if there's a way to add it as part of the custom javascript - but not that I could find.

Honestly, this is the bug blocking me from using Rambox as a daily driver; I don't have the battery capacity to run on the dedicated GPU 24/7.

[newzealandpaul]

Would be great to have the "--disable-gpu" option in the RamBox preferences. I too can't run the discrete GPU when on battery.

My solution now is to run a AppleScript (complied into a .app to run on Startup)

do shell script "/Applications/Rambox.app/Contents/MacOS/Rambox --disable-gpu"

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

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This issue has been automatically closed since there has not been any recent activity. Please open a new issue for related bugs.

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