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My MacBook Pro 13 inch, M1, 2020 becomes very slow when connected to an external display. Just updated to the newest MacOS Sonoma 14.0. Doesn't help.

All the programs' CPU usage seems to go up. The programs that seem to increase the most are WindowServer, kernal_task and coreaudiod. Although a steep increase in all doesn't seem normal. But especially the increase in coreaudiod seems strange.

I checked online for a bit. I do have the /Library/Preferences/Audio folder (according to the terminal, can't find it in Finder), which missing could cause a high CPU percentage used by coreaudiod.

Screenshot of Activity Monitor showing normal CPU usage

Screenshot of Activity Monitor showing increased CPU usage

In the past, the screen worked fine with this laptop. I tried different HDMI cables. The only thing I didn't try was the USB-C/HDMI connector. But would guess it's in the software.

As maybe you can read, I'm not a pro in this. Someone here to help?

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    What model is the display? How big is it (resolution)? Does it have speakers/mics? WindowServer looks after all the windows and Desktop Spaces, so some extra work is inevitable there. Does the CPU usage go down after time? Bear in mind that the CPU% shown is per core, and you've still got over 60% total CPU spare, so your computer is not hitting any CPU limit. What happens if you stop using Chrome? What's the Memory usage like?
    – benwiggy
    Commented Oct 18, 2023 at 14:40
  • Also: MS Teams adds an audio driver which some apps can use as an input and output. Make sure that nothing is configured to use that.
    – benwiggy
    Commented Oct 18, 2023 at 14:43
  • Thanks for your comment! It was the USB-C/HDMI connector in the end...
    – Roemer
    Commented Oct 18, 2023 at 22:27

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