Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

Re:Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bu... by nonninz on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @09:40AM (#39370259)

I have this using Firefox on a 2019 Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM.

If the laptop has not been restarted for a while, Firefox tabs will eat up more and more memory over time until it makes the mac kind-of unresponsive (*) and will need to get hard power cycled.

The only signs that this is about to happen are two:

1. Any audio-emitting webapp will start to get very choppy, whether is youtube on FF, Google meet on chrome, or a slack call/huddle. Which is the problem I think you are referring to.

2. Switching workspaces animation will get very very choppy. Usually when this happens it's already almost too late.

(*) this means that while the pointer is still moving smoothily, even from a BT mouse, there is no reaction to any click or keyboard typing.

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Re:Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bu... by Night_Thastus on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @11:11AM (#39371580)

This seems unusual for such a serious memory leak to be present. Do you have any addons/plugins in Firefox? One of them may be the cause of the leak.

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Re:Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bu... by avery17 on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @11:59AM (#39372138)

Uptime, 456 days 12 hours 8 minutes and 42 seconds. Firefox, 668 tabs. Countless other background tasks. Why doesn't my audio work!?!

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Re:Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bu... by smcleod on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @02:13PM (#39373864)

That… is not a good idea. You should patch your OS.

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Re:Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bu... by Night_Thastus on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @04:00PM (#39375256)

That's not the original commenter. It's just someone being humorous.

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Re:Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bu... by smcleod on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @04:02PM (#39375281)

Oh - sorry! I completely missed that. Will teach me for reading the comments at 7AM!

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Re:Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bu... by BafS on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @06:55PM (#39377263)

I have the exact same issue, it starts to be choppy at random time and I have to reboot, usually in the middle of my work. I'm considering switching to another OS because of this single issue that has been there for years.

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Re:Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bu... by wkat4242 on Friday February 16, 2024 @03:07AM (#39394430)

I see the same with firefox on my FreeBSD daily driver machine.

I thought it was because I pause the entire firefox process when the screen is locked. When it resumes it sometimes acts up (I use the STOP and CONT signals for this). But maybe it's just a FF bug.

I just restart it once every few days, my OS doesn't actually become unstable due to it. But i do have 64 GB of ram (one of the benefits to no longer being tied to apple's ecosystem is that memory upgrades and amazingly cheap)

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