MS Teams Helper using up >100% of CPU MacBook

Teams worked for about 2 years on my Macbook without any problems. 2 weeks ago it started with the issues described here. On a call, the renderer takes about 100% CPU and the call UI becomes unusable. The rest of the application is very slow then.

It is impossible to mute or do anything else. Closing the call restores the old behavior and I can work again. The main Teams application runs okay.

At the moment I use the workaround using the browser app instead.

GPU acceleration is disabled, the turbo boost switcher is running and of course I deleted the caches and even re-installed the app.

From the beginning of my career I have seen the problems of Microsoft. I thought with time that things were getting better, but as I watched Windows users notice the same problems with each release, I realized that the user/development team relationship was always bad. My organisation forced me to switch to Teams without asking me. Today it is unacceptable for me to have my stable apple environment polluted by unstable software. teams has already crashed my machine at least 4 times. My last apple crash I can't even remember when. Skype user, I can't even understand why Teams has lost functionality.

It's not that hard to make a menu where you can disable the use of the mac's GPU by Teams! It's also not difficult to allow an incoming call to join a conference.

It seems that nobody uses this software at microsoft. It seems that no one reads the forums. Because macos, teams and crash or freeze are found together since the beginning of Teams... Since the beginning Teams is not reliable.

You guys shake it up at microsoft, don't forget the cousins who have a mac!

Dès le début de ma carrière j’ai constaté les problèmes de Microsoft. Je pensais avec le temps que les choses s’arrangeaient mais en voyant les utisateur de Windows remarquer à chaque version les mêmes problèmes j’ai constaté que le lient utilisateur / équipe de développement était toujours mauvais. Mon organisation m’a obligé à passer sous Teams sans me demander mon avis. Aujourd’hui il est pour moi inacceptatble d’avoir mon environnement apple stable pollué par un logiciel instable. teams m’a déjà planté au moins 4 fois ma machine. Mon dernier plantage apple je n’arrive même pas à me souvenir quand. Utilisateur de Skype, je n’arrive même pas à comprendre pourquoi Teams a perdu des fonctionnalités.

Enfin, ce n’est quand même pas compliqué de faire un menu où l’on peut désactiver l’utilisation du GPU du mac par Teams ! Ce n’est pas non plus difficile de permettre à un appel entrant de rejoindre une conférence.

A croire que personne n’utilise ce logiciel chez microsoft. A croire que personne ne lit les forums. Car macos, teams et crash ou freeze se retrouvent ensemble depuis le début de Teams… Depuis le début Teams n’est pas fiable.

Les mecs secouez vous chez microsoft, n’oubliez pas les cousins qui ont un mac !

This is still an issue with macOS 11.5.1 and MS Teams for Mac version 1.4.00.20364

Not sure if anybody mentioned this throughout this thread, I was experiencing high cpu usage with the microsoft teams helper (renderer) process. Was able to mitigate by disabling Teams' screen recording access. Restarted Teams then reenabled the screen recording permission and restarted the app again.

The problem (other than it being a Microsoft software issue that needs "real fixing") can be somewhat mitigated by using the following techniques. I have both a  15" 2019 MacBook Pro i7 and a 2018 Mac Mini i7 6-core using an eGPU and Radeon 5700XT pushing 4 monitors. So there is plenty of power behind my systems and yet the Teams renderer issue is still a problem and is most definitely flawed in its current state.

That said, first, the system being unusable is directly related to how large the window with all the video from people in the meeting is made on the screen. When maximized on the screen on one of my 4k monitors (3840x2160) the system crawls and is unusable. When I shrink the window to its smallest possible size (about 1/8 full screen) the system becomes much more responsive. Basically makes your desktop video conference more like an iPhone Facetime session.  This doesn't help much when someone is sharing their screen and you need to actually see it, but otherwise it makes a big difference.

Second, you can further lessen the effect of the renderer on your overall system performance by reducing the app's processor priority in macOS. I'm running 11.2.3 (Big Sur) and this helped considerably.

1. Launch "Activity Monitor" in your Applications/Utilities folder. Find the app in question "Microsoft Teams Helper (Renderer)" in the list of entries when on the CPU tab. It will only be listed there when you are in an actual meeting. In that row there is a column labeled "PID", or process ID. Make note of that number.
2. Launch a terminal window and use the following command to reduce the overall processor priority for the renderer.

     renice -n 10 -p {PID}

Use the number you obtained in the first step in the above command you enter in this second step. Hit return.

That's it! You should see a considerable improvement in how responsive your system is while on a meeting. Hope this helps you all out until Microsoft wakes up and takes care of this issue that's lasted more than a year. Keep in mind that you will have to do this each time you join a new meeting as each new meeting gets a new PID. So it must be set each time. Yes, annoying I know.

Here's more detail on the command above for those that are interested...

The -n option changes the nice level by adding 10 to the current value (0 by default). The range of values are -20 to 20, with lowest value meaning highest priority. As an ordinary user, you can use values 0 to 20. To assign a negative value, you need to have root privileges (e.g. use sudo command). Read more about nice and renice by typing "man nice" and "man renice" in Terminal.

Nice and renice do not limit the percentage of the CPU availability to a given application per se, they do however allow for changes to the scheduling priority, or in other words how much of the CPU time a process will get. This is all relative to the CPU load on a system. So if the system is under utilized it will have no noticeable effect.

// Reduce a process' CPU priority

     renice -n 10 -p {PID}

// Return a process' CPU priority to normal

     renice -n 0 -p {PID}