keybase / keybase/client

Keybase for OS X constantly consumes CPU despite not being used

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Dominant language
Go
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Description

Keybase uses more CPU than almost everything else on my OS X system despite me not ever using it for anything: it has been minimized since I rebooted my system yesterday yet has used more CPU than Chrome which I used for a 1-hr video call via Zoom and Firefox with ~250 tabs open.

htop sorted by cumulative CPU time says:

```
PID USER PRI NI VIRT RES S CPU% MEM% TIME+ ▽Command
162 root 21 20 12.1G 140M ? 0.4 1.7 4h03:05 /Applications/Code42.app/Contents/Library/LaunchServices/Code42
834 gerald 24 0 4863M 306M ? 7.1 3.7 1h58:46 /Applications/Keybase.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/keybase -d
0 root 21 0 72.4G 2780M ? 3.1 33.9 58:25.66 kernel_task
821 gerald 24 0 4824M 98M ? 2.6 1.2 33:23.92 /Applications/Keybase.app/Contents/Frameworks/Keybase Helper (R
276 _windowse 17 0 6806M 30764 ? 3.0 0.4 33:22.14 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SkyLight.framework/Resources/
59797 gerald 24 0 5531M 160M ? 14.7 2.0 29:15.08 /Applications/iTerm.app/Contents/MacOS/iTerm2
60457 gerald 17 0 8997M 86860 ? 4.3 1.0 24:36.81 /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/Frameworks/Google Chro
60428 gerald 24 0 8955M 583M ? 5.7 7.1 23:29.47 /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
[...]
```

What is Keybase doing that it uses all this CPU? I have never really used it for much – the last chat activity was in Mar 2020, I don't have any shared folders with recent activity, and am not a member of any teams.

[Here is a gist](https://gist.github.com/gosko/81b82645a95e43a55040b7b57e4022f7) with 1000 lines of output from dtruss on pid 834 from above.

This is running on a fairly simple OS X 10.15.7 desktop system with a single user, with a couple NFS filesystems mounted from my Synology NAS. The top process listed above (Code42) is CrashPlan, used for offsite backups.

I just quit the Keybase app and removed it from my Login items so this probably won't be an issue for me any more, but am sending this report in case it's helpful.

Keybase GUI Version: 5.3.0-20200310172631+4f2689009b

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Start by reviewing the linked dtruss gist and the reported Keybase processes on macOS 10.15.7, using Keybase GUI version 5.3.0 as the reproduction context. Determine what background activity accounts for the sustained CPU use and document a reproducible result; the report does not name a source file or test.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go, macos
Domain
desktop, performance
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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