High CPU Usage in 10.52.8

[Okeydoke 3]

Since I updated my Evernote installation to 10.52.8-win-ddl-public (3911), Evernote is constantly showing CPU usage of at least 25% in Task Manager. It even has the fans on my laptop at full speed. It also shows as having 8 processes running, one of which is the culprit. It does not show high disk or network usage. Memory usage is about 750 MB, which seems high to me, but perhaps that's normal.

System Info:
Processor: Intel Core i7-9750H
Installed RAM: 16.0 GB
OS: Windows 10 Home 22H2

[PinkElephant 8,091]

You started yet another thread on that issue. If you search the forum you find solutions.

Short version: Use Revo Uninstaller to remove everything from your PC, restart, reinstall, log in. It will download a fresh copy from the server, and this will most likely calm down the CPU peak. Root cause seems to be a corrupted local database.

[noder 1]

I am having the same exact issue on a new windows 11 laptop.  Fresh install of Evernote 10.52.8 with processor running at 25-30%.  I had not even opened the Evernote application yet.  Seems odd that my database would be corrupted on such a new install.

[SactoMurph 3]

What the other posters describe is exactly the issue I've been having for at least the past two weeks (Evernote Windows 10.52.8).

When Evernote is launched -- and even when it is just running in the background -- Windows Task Manager shows at least 8 instances of the program as active, with one or more of them using >35% CPU capacity, and hundreds of megabytes of memory.

I followed the various suggestions in this forum to the letter: backup of my data, followed by removal via Revo Uninstaller, followed by reboot and reinstallation; unchecking the option to retain data upon exit, etc. None of these addressed the issue; each subsequent use of the Windows app resulted in exactly the same behavior.

At this point, I am accessing my notes on my PC via the web app, which is a suitable workaround in the short term. However, if the problem with the Windows app is not fixed in short order, I will absolutely look to transfer my data to another note-taking app, of which there is no shortage.

I like Evernote (have been a paying member since 2009) and appreciate its functionality, but am rightly concerned when new, real problems are created by updates. That tells me that the back-end code has become unwieldy, and raises issues about the long-term integrity of my data.

[PinkElephant 8,091]

25-30%* is not much - this is the level to be expected in normal use. With a new install it is likely still downloading and arranging content. This will likely go on for a little more (depending on how much data you have) and then fall down to a percent or so on idle. When you use EN actively, expect between 10 and 30%. At least this is what my install does.

* The CPU measure is per core - 25% means one of the CPU cores is running at 25%. Depending on how many cores you have you may or may not feel this activity level.

[SactoMurph 3]

PinkElephant, thank you for the prompt (immediate!) reply, but no, this is not at all normal. As I mentioned, this has been going on, noticeably, for several weeks. As I did not mention, one of visible symptoms is that my CPU fan runs incessantly when Evernote instances are running in the background. My fan almost NEVER runs unless I am using a high-end rendering app. Recently, the fan activity has been constant, until the Evernote background processes are terminated manually and/or the Evernote app is uninstalled. Only then does the fan activity cease.

With my level of technical knowledge, I can't say at a micro level what is causing this behavior, but at a macro level, it is obvious: something in the current Evernote release is doing it, and it is not normal.

[PinkElephant 8,091]

20-30% while using IS normal.

EN is based on a framework - that is a browser  based on Chrome(ium) running the app instead of a browser window.

Now open Chrome (if you have it), or another browser, load an active website, and start to do entries. Chances are you get a similar level of CPU usage.

As any browser activity will go up and down, with user interaction and background tasks, an EN session does the same.

When pushed back into the background it will fall to an idle level of maybe 1% +/-.

Last time I installed EN on a new Mac, I observed a little closer. It took a while to download all (constant network traffic for EN), and while it lasted, CPU usage was elevated. Once network traffic was off, it fell to idle.

[Bentot 5]

I'm having this same issue with a similar build (see below). I've been wondering why my fans have been cranking so much. After shutting down Evernote, the task closes, but 8 of it's compadres (Evernote.exe) remain cranking the CPU. Even task manager says that the power usage is "Very High" with a red background. Haven't tried uninstall/reinstall yet...guess that'll be my next step. For now, I just have to kill the Evernote process tree in order to silence my fans.

This is not typical behavior for when I have used Evernote in the past.

10.52.8-win-winstore-public (394)
Editor: v164.0.20364
Service: v1.64.1

[delegatejordan 1]

This was happening to me for a few weeks, but it stopped for some reason. Haven't updated. Sits at 0% now at idle instead of like 60% with my fan blasting away lol

[Bentot 5]

Hah! Now that it's been a week or so (of the fan cranking and high CPU usage), today it stopped and CPU usage is back to 0%. Weird! Maybe killing the process multiple times did something or maybe there was some sync issue going on that was resolved, but for some reason it has finished hogging CPU resources.

Usually I have Evernote running all the time. Last night I killed all evernote.exe processes completely and let it sit until this morning. When I started it back up, all was normal. Not sure what the reasoning was, but just noting my experience.

[agsteele 2,944]

A number of reports coming through that this issue has been resolved.

Nobody can say why or whether it is permanent.

[tkramme 5]

Not sure if this is relevant to anyone, but this issue is still out there. Not sure if it is the same, or something different. But I am all the sudden having the exact same issue on all of my PC's. I have tried all the solutions provided, but it keeps coming back, hence why I reached out to support.  See below received from support yesterday 5/23/2023. 

*****

Marian R. (Evernote Help and Learning)

May 23, 2023, 14:49 PDT

Hello Thomas,
 
Thank you for reaching out. This is Marian from Evernote Support.
 
I understand that the CPU usage on all your Windows computer is very high. Thank you for sending a copy of your activity logs, and my sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.
 
Please know that this is an issue that we are already aware of. While I am unable to provide an exact time frame, our engineering team is working to get this addressed as soon as possible. 
 
As a workaround, you can may access Evernote through the following:
 ·        Evernote Web

·        By using the Legacy app

 To install the Evernote Legacy app for Windows, follow these steps:
 1.      Click the Evernote Legacy installer: Evernote Legacy for Windows.

2.      Open the downloaded file to begin the installation.

 Thank you for your time and utmost understanding.
 
Regards,
  

Marian R.
Customer Support
 

[PinkElephant 8,091]

There is no issue out there. It is "in there", to be more precise inside of your computer.

EN is munching on a piece of corrupted data, running in a loop, which causes the CPU load.

Get rid of that corrupted database, and the CPU usage will fall to regular by itself.

[Heinz57 4]

I am using version 10.63.4 and the problem is still there, using about 48% of CPU. The usage continued after I exited and I had to nuke each of three instances in task manager.

[PinkElephant 8,091]

When there are what you call instances running, you didn’t „exit“.

You only closed the front end window, and kept the app running. To really stop the app, use the command Quit, usually from the File menu. Then you don’t need a Task Manager.

[greco_italiano 0]

On Windows 10 here, long-time user, and just wanted to bump this in the off-chance any Evernote technical staff are continuing to follow this issue.

While, I can report that at idle, unless at some random times, the CPU usage is usually less than 1% (though occasionally 2-4%), the main issue for me is that during active, normal usage, the CPU usage is extremely high.

When simply editing a purely text-based note, I get to around 15-20% CPU usage consistently -- this is absurdly high compared to other applications that edit documents. For reference, the legacy v6.25.3.9348 app, in my usage, never exceeds 5% during active use of editing a note (usually 3-4%). Microsoft Word, in active use of typing and editing, 3-5%. Microsoft Excel 5-8% actively editing a file. Even the "New Microsoft Outlook for Windows", which is a web-based app that is constantly syncing to the cloud in real-time, never exceeds a few percent (and usually actually just 1%) in actively editing a mail message (which could be considered similar to Evernote v10 writing of a note that syncs constantly to the cloud). 

@PinkElephantreports that between 10 and 30% is to be "expected during normal use". Using upwards of a third of the CPU usage is no way an amount that should be expected for an application that is not a game or doing graphics editing. This is just a note-taking software, not Adobe Premiere video editing!

The only thing we can hope for is that the Bending Spoons acquisition's stated aims to increase speed and reliability ("Future-proofing Evernote’s foundations") also includes a revamp of Evernote v10 into a v11 that is responsive and not more resource hungry than graphics programs.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,954]

 

[PinkElephant 8,091]

Using an app is causing the use of system resources. Nothing new here, it is simply overthinking when trying to „control“ what a modern OS does while it puts resources to work.

The only issue where things should work differently is when the CPU stays high while the app is idle. It is a sign that the app is crunching on a corrupted database .

In this case full uninstall using Revo Uninstaller / App Cleaner followed by a fresh install will usually solve the problem.

[greco_italiano 0]

@Dave-in-Decatur thank you for that link! My issue wasn't that the program is slow per se, but rather that it takes up extremely high CPU cycles during active use (i.e. also drains battery on laptop as a result). I actually tried the new version by first logging out, clean uninstalling, removing all the old bits (revo), and reinstalling fresh with v10.76.2. Somehow, now during active usage, the app is taking up even more CPU resources for me (25, 30, even 35%).

20 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Using an app is causing the use of system resources. Nothing new here, it is simply overthinking when trying to „control“ what a modern OS does while it puts resources to work.

@PinkElephant With all due respect, brushing aside my concerns with "using an app causes the use of system resources" implies that an application can have no downsides. One can disagree on the level of CPU resources that are "reasonable" for a given app to consume during active use, and that can be up for debate depending on what the application does. But I don't see how it is at all unreasonable for the user base to expect an app to consume a "rational" amount of resources during its active use?

Let's say that Evernote, during active use, consumed 50% of CPU resources -- would that be "using an app causes the use of system resources"?  What if it used 75%? 100%? It's clear that there's definitely some threshold above which, for any given application, the CPU usage (and resultant impact on battery life) becomes unacceptably high. What is that number? At some point it goes beyond "overthinking when trying to control what a modern OS does".

This is why I actually listed CPU resources being consumed during active use of some other applications that are either more powerful, or somehow similar in constant sycing the cloud or web-application based. I'm not talking about comparing Evernote to notepad, I'm talking about resource-intensive programs like Word, Excel, & New Outlook for Windows (which is web-application based, so to make a better comparison to Evernote) -- none of these consume even remotely close to what Evernote v10 does (my numbers in my prior post above).

I simply don't understand why it is unreasonable to ask the question that, given that Evernote is a document editor like MS Word, why does it consume 7x the resources of MS Word? Both are multi-media document editors, and both are syncing edits immediately to the cloud (Office 365).

Is it really so unreasonable to expect an app to consume resources that are typical for the type of work it does?

[PinkElephant 8,091]

With all due respect - you have just killed your old install (for a reason), reinstalled everything, including a massive (?) amount of data - and are now wondering that it needs system resources to organize everything. Wait a week with the app running in the background - it likely is still downloading your notes full content, organizing it into the local database.

Or do you pay for your computer use by the CPU "consumed" ? I doubt it - but just for the protocol, CPU does not "consume" itself. It is there to be used.

It's another issue with the battery - but then with running x86 CPUs I am afraid there is no easy way out. While I write this, I sit in the train with my MacBook Pro, several apps open including EN, on a 4 hour trip. I will leave the train with roughly 80% of battery capacity - the last time my Mac has seen a charger was yesterday evening. EN is currently at roughly 12% of CPU (on the Mac, this is measured per core). No sweat, nor for the Mac nor for me.

But ok, I got slightly OT, we have Windows users here reporting an absolutely regular CPU and energy usage.