Memory Usage and Editor Lag

Questions & Suggestions
1

(TL;DR Editor gets slow and laggy over time)

EDIT: I made a mistake by confusing the Editor and Engine in the Activity Monitor. It's the "Keyboard Maestro" process memory that grows in size, not "Keyboard Maestro Engine" memory. I've corrected the post below.

After spending some time in the Editor copy/pasting actions between macros, it will eventually slow down significantly to the point where I have to restart, or in some cases reboot.

In troubleshooting, when I first launch the KM Editor with no macros previously selected, its memory usage is around 198MB. I can use my system normally and don't see much of a change.

However, as soon as I start simply selecting macros, for example just arrowing down the list of macros, it will quickly shoot up to 500MB +/-. I've tested this multiple times and it happens every time. I can restart the engine without rebooting and it starts over with the same results as above.

Once I start working in the Editor, moving between macros, copying actions, etc, it will eventually (sometimes quickly and sometimes over time) go over 1GB. Whenever it starts to lag, I check the activity monitor and it's north of 1GB.

I have Evaluate Conditions turned off. I don't have any big variables (129 chars max). Neither log shows anything firing or any errors. I do have a number of Image-related actions, but I'm not sure how that could explain the slow down from simply viewing macros in the Editor. I've looked at all the posts in the forum I can find for hints, but I'm not sure what to look for now.

As an example, I just copied a random group with 5 nested actions and pasted it to a new macro. Didn't run anything. Memory went from 448MB to 536MB and isn't going back down. This does not immediately change performance, and I understand that memory and lag are not necessarily related, but it seems that whenever the performance is impacted, memory is at 1GB+

Here is what I see when opening the Engine entry in Activity Monitor right now:

Real Memory Size: 876.0 MB
Virtual Memory Size: 392.41 GB
Shared Memory Size: 384.5 MB
Private Memory Size: 463.7 MB

Does this memory behavior seem normal, and does anyone have ideas for troubleshooting the lag I experience?

Oh one last thing. I did previously have the bug with 1Password that would beachball the Editor whenever I tried to use certain keystrokes, but that was resolved by unchecking 3rd party integration in 1Password, and I believe has since been addressed in an update by Peter.

2

The version of KM and macOS that you’re on will be of use to someone who might be able to help, also your hardware configuration.

3

Right. Thanks, @tiffle. I forgot that. Your reminder caused me to check the behavior on another machine that is using the same sync file.

Both are running KM 11.0.1

The main machine is M1 MBP with 64GB RAM on Monterey 12.7

The second Machine is Intel MBP with 32GB RAM on Sonoma 14.1. On this machine, memory for KM Engine on reboot starts at just under 400MB compared to under 200MB on the first machine, but neither the Engine nor Editor seem immediately impacted by the steps mentioned above.

1 Like
4

Ever since my upgrade to Sonoma and KM 11, (and an M3 iMac) I've not been checking my RAM usage, but I just checked now and my Editor was running at 750 MB. As you said, it seems to increase (but sometimes decrease) as I open new macros. I'm not sure if this number is normal or evidence of a problem. But relaunching KM does reduce the memory allotment for a while. I don't even have a lot of macros, only the new ones that I've written in the last week since I got my new Mac.

There are ways to relaunch both the KM Editor and KM Engine, such as overnight when your Mac is not in use, if you want to try that as a temporary solution.

I was writing this post to ask you if your macros save/store images or not, such as with the Find Image action.

5

Some cases that will result in the editor being slow are having large macros open and multiple editor windows open (and especially both at the same time).

Other than that, if you are having performance issues, if you can get an Activity Monitor sample of the process while it is performing poorly, that is the most likely to be helpful in determining where it is slow. Email that to support@stairways.com.

As far as memory, the usage depends on too many things to speak to what is reasonable or not.

If there are specific things that make the memory usage increase endlessly, then they should be reported to support@stairways.com.

It's entirely expected for the memory be to lower when the application first launches and for it to grow somewhat over time as many things will be cached by the application or the system. So it is only when you can do something where you keep repeating the same change/unchange over and over again and the memory usage increases by a relatively consistent amount after the first few times that it could be an issue that I might be able to resolve. If you can find such a thing, then report it to support@stairways.com.

Debugging any of this via the forum is unlikely to be straight forward.

1 Like
6

Thanks, Peter. I thought I might get some general advice here, but I will email you with a sample next time it happens.

1 Like