Remember When Chrome Went Bad on MacOS?

📰 Daring Fireball

Learn how to identify and resolve mysterious CPU usage issues on MacOS, like the one caused by Google Chrome's Keystone updater

intermediate Published 4 Jun 2026

Action Steps

Investigate system processes using Activity Monitor
Identify correlated CPU usage patterns
Delete unwanted updaters or applications
Monitor system performance after changes
Research alternative browsers or update mechanisms

Who Needs to Know This

Developers, DevOps engineers, and power users on MacOS can benefit from this knowledge to troubleshoot and optimize system performance

Key Insight

💡 Correlated CPU usage patterns can indicate unwanted system processes or applications

Key Takeaways

Learn how to identify and resolve mysterious CPU usage issues on MacOS, like the one caused by Google Chrome's Keystone updater

Full Article

Loren Brichter , back in 2020: Short story: Google Chrome installs an updater called Keystone on your computer, which is bizarrely correlated to massive unexplained CPU usage in WindowServer (a system process) 1 , and made my whole computer slow even when Chrome wasn’t running . Deleting Chrome and Keystone made my computer way, way faster, all the time . Long story: I noticed my brand new 16” MacBook Pro started acting sluggishly doing even trivial things like scrolling. Activity Monitor showed

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