High constant CPU usage (~30%) with only trackpad features enabled

Configuration Help & General Discussion
1

Hi community,

I'm new to BetterTouchTool and noticed it's using ~30% CPU constantly in Activity Monitor, even though I've disabled all features except trackpad gestures.

Details:

  • macOS version: Tahoe 26.4
  • BTT version: 6.325
  • Mac model: M1 Mac Mini
  • Only trackpad triggers active; everything else off.

Is this normal, or is there a way to reduce/optimize CPU usage? Any tips or common fixes?

Thanks!

2

it all depends on the actions you are running. Best check the "Recently Used" section in BTT to see whether anything weird is triggering a lot. Trackpad gestures would never use more than 1-3%

If you have the experimental Dropbox or iCloud sync enabled, disable that.

if you want you can run this terminal command and post the resulting file here (btt.txt on your Desktop), then I might be able to tell what is causing the cpu spikes.

sample BetterTouchTool > ~/Desktop/btt.txt
3

After some troubleshooting, I discovered that BTT was automatically detecting and connecting to my music production MIDI equipment. Unchecking these devices in the settings immediately resolved the CPU spikes.

Insight for improvement: While it’s great that BTT supports MIDI, having it automatically "listen" to all connected MIDI devices by default—without user notification—can lead to significant performance overhead for users with complex studio setups.

It might be worth considering:

  1. Opt-in discovery: Making MIDI integration an opt-in feature or showing a notification when a new MIDI device is detected.
  2. Performance optimization: Investigating why the "listening" process consumes so much CPU when no specific MIDI actions are mapped.

Sharing this in case other users are experiencing similar mystery CPU drain! Thanks for the great work on the tool.

Best!

4

Mh BTT should only enable any MIDI functionality if you have configured something in the MIDI section, it should not do that automatically. Are you sure you don't have anything in there?

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5

Nothing there but the midi parameters section is full and a few of them are greyed i can't opt out

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6

They are listed there if you open the settings, but they are not being connected unless you actually have some configuration for them.

if you encounter cpu spikes again it would be great if you could run the sample command and post its output

sample BetterTouchTool > ~/Desktop/btt.txt