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MacBook Air M1 Scrolling lag

Hello everyone,


For the past couple of months, I’ve been noticing some scrolling lag and stuttering. I’m currently running the latest version of macOS Sequoia on a MacBook Air M1, and the laggy scrolling happens mostly on YouTube in Safari. However, I’ve also seen some laggy scrolling in other apps as well. Most of the time, though, scrolling across the system is smooth, which makes me think this could be a software issue.


Has anyone else experienced this? Could this be a bug, or maybe a hardware problem?


MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.0

Posted on Oct 21, 2024 8:57 AM

Reply
10 replies

Nov 3, 2024 4:47 AM in response to 1dayumay

OP wrote " I tried every mouse you can imagine "


By Virtue of the above - does this exclude the Apple Magic Mouse ?


Not something one may what to hear but using a Third Party Mice on macOS with the expectations it will function like on Windows '95 ?


Sorry but the expectations are somewhat misguided


Apple can fix , Applications, Operating Systems and Apple Accessories 


Apple can not fix Third Party Accessories 


Apple can’t fix the Users’ choice of Third Party Accessories  installed and use on this computer.


That clearly falls  Out-Side of the Domain of Apple.


It belongs solely with the Third Party Maker of the device  


How to contact an app developer


Nov 2, 2024 7:26 PM in response to Fan_Apple


I was having mouse accuracy issues for years, this time I said no excuses, I'm going to get the best MacBook Pro I can get Apple M3 Max 128 GB RAM...

Still having trouble with the mouse.


Right at this moment I'm having a little bit of a slight delay with scrolling to a point makes me motion sick , because my brain expects the movement on the screen and it's delayed


I tried every mouse you can imagine, and it still is not even close to Windows 95 accuracy. Even CadMouse Pro Wireless even using it USB-C to USB-C, still has terrible accuracy.


The majority of people don't really complain because they're not doing anything Advanced requiring fast, high accuracy; they're just browsing around. I'm really curious what Apple engineers themselves use.


I think this is just a software problem Mac OS is not prioritizing the mouse accuracy if there's anything going on in the backend, it impacts the mouse accuracy.


Nov 3, 2024 4:34 AM in response to 1dayumay

Your Mac is definitely powerful, so it seems likely these issues are software-related. I’ve noticed a slight delay in scrolling as well, especially on the Studio Display. Do you find that the scrolling delay is more noticeable on an external display compared to the built-in screen? On the built-in display, I see less lag with scrolling and UI animations overall.


By the way, is there any way to send a video of what’s happening on your screen so I can see exactly what you’re experiencing?


[Edited by Moderator]

Nov 4, 2024 2:12 PM in response to Fan_Apple

I have all three monitors set the same refresh rates, so regardless of which monitor I'm on, I can feel it.


With scrolling, it's just impossible to get precise Windows type of scrolling, so even if you scroll one distance and you scroll the same thing back, it's impossible to get the same result. So you're constantly putting extra effort a little bit to adjust your scrolling input because you never know the exact result.


If official Apple representative would really want to see a video which I am not sure why because they are probably aware of the problem but I will record one otherwise it's will be a lot of work try to record my hand then the screen at the same time.


I see all over the place these external applications to help scrolling improve but I have too much confidential stuff on my devices to install these Shady softwares.


Nov 4, 2024 2:41 PM in response to PRP_53


 Apple Magic Mouse is great for my grandma to browse news sites at a 90 Hz polling rate, an a 63.7 ms delay to the start of movement, so it's not designed for advanced speed and accuracy. Logitech G PRO X SUPERLIGHT 2 has 8000Hz polling rate, delay to the start of movement 10.5 ms just to understand how slow Magic Mouse is.


I just love this "Third Party" thing, it seems like their exit line for support when they don't know what they are looking at.


Nobody's saying fix my third-party Mouse we're just talking about the interaction with MacOS, even with M3 Max 128 GB RAM, if I see in the launchd.log some activity like my icloud is syncing or, spotlight is indexing etc it immediately impacts the mouse accuracy.

Yeah if you're using a Magic Mouse scrolling through news and Word, excel files, you probably won't notice it.


Regarding scrolling no rocket science needed I cannot find anyway to scroll one way and scroll back and end up at the same spot. This is nothing to do with external devices applications, with macOS there's always this little inputs of either your slight difference in speed or whatever other factors it's considering every scroll has a different output it's never the same constantly dynamic.


So if you're doing anything advanced with speed and high accuracy, there's always this little input battle you're going through with the scrolling.



Nov 5, 2024 12:42 PM in response to Fan_Apple

Can you go to console, Log Reports, then launchd.log see if you see any repeated Warnings or errors?


In my case whenever I start seeing errors of imagent "imessage or facetime" trying to connect to my contacts or sandbox is getting denied from something, I start seeing mouse accuracy starts decreasing. Which literally just happening right now so annoying.


MacBook Air M1 Scrolling lag

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