Zwift on Mac M1 with Ventura lagging

Since two weeks I am encountering issues with lagging graphics. It occurs 80% of the time and is independent of resolution, or amount of riders around as I have tested this on an empty track. During the last ride I started off without any lag but after appr. 5-10min it started lagging.

It is a very consistent regular lag every 2 seconds - not a sudden lag. Internet connection is more than sufficient and I haven’t had any prior issues.

Anyone else experiencing this?

I have a MBP with an M2 Pro and Zwift is the only thing that makes the fan come on so I’d check the Activity Monitor app to see if it’s maxing out your machine, and then play around with the resolutions to see if that helps. Until Zwift has an Apple Silicon build (instead of x86 emulation with Rosetta) it’s probably going to be pushing the limits on our machines.

Edit: Also, since you are seeing the issue show up a while after you start there might be a memory leak somewhere in the system, so also watch the memory usage in activity monitor and see if that rises continuously. The lagging might happen when your machine runs out of RAM and starts swapping to the flash drive, AKA “thrashing”.

I haven’t noticed a problem running Ventura on a 2021 MacBook Pro. I’m not sure what you mean by lagging. Is it like jerky movement of avatars or landscape or both?

Thanks for the replies. Jerky movements of everything - avatar, surroundings, HUD.

I agree with @J_Terrell that memory pressure could be an issue. I have 16GB RAM in my system and I don’t have much else running when I’m using Zwift. Swapping is also bad because it will wear out your SSD faster. You might try rebooting before running Zwift, terminate other applications, and disable any cloud storage sync services.

Well, I ran Zwift in the background in “Just Watch” mode for an hour or two and the memory didn’t really go up, in fact it dropped some so maybe no memory leak. However, it DID allocate 35GB of RAM and my machine was using about 22GB with my normal work stuff running. My machine is 32GB so if you have a 16GB or less machine there might still be some swapping going on.

Been having a similar issue the past few days as well … I used to run Zwift and OBS Studio to stream races/rides and all of a sudden, the laptop is using up a bunch of CPU power and getting very warm. I tested my internet connection and it seems fine and I don’t run anything except for Zwift, OBS Studio, and Safari (one tab for YouTube). I haven’t made any changes to my laptop (MacBook Air M1) or installed anything new - I figured maybe the new Zwift update had something to do with it. Strange. Glad I’m not the only one…

I also have had issues with my new MBP (14 inch 2023, M2, 32gb ram) and I am really surprised how poor it behaves compared to older mbp I just replaced. For me, it gets worse over time and by end of longer rides (several hours) the whole computer is bogged down and activity monitor shows it is all zwift. Will reach out to them but also curious if anyone has a solution or improvement for this.

For me the whole topic just disappeared again. No changes were made. MacBook runs as usual, lovely fluid graphics. Any issues just disappeared into thin air.