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Figma Helper (Renderer) is using excessive memory, why?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
June 7, 2021
107 replies
24553 views

Hello everyone, I’m trying to discern what the underlying issue is here. This has only been really presenting itself as a problem in the past few days, but for some reason almost any Figma project I have open winds up consuming essentially all of my system memory.

I’ve noticed that this happens regardless of how many project files I have open. While I’m not experiencing any crashing of the application, it does bring my work laptop to a grinding halt and creates an essentially unusable experience. Is there any reason Figma is utilizing so much memory? Are our working files just too large?

For reference, I’m using the desktop app on macOS 10.15.7 and as far as I am aware this is the latest version available.

I’m really scratching my head over this one as to why it’s popped up as an issue so suddenly. Granted this Macbook Pro is just a base configuration, so it may just be a performance limitation, but I wouldn’t expect Figma to be stressing the machine out worse than Adobe’s Creative Suite. Any insight is most welcome! Please let me know if you need any specific information.

Thanks Figma Community!

Ask the community

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Best answer by djv

Hey All, sorry for the lack of acknowledgement here!

Historically, the forum has been primarily run by the community, and I didn’t start at Figma until August 30th, 2021.

As a browser-based app, Figma uses available browser memory (~2GB per browser tab) while loading and saving, but it shouldn’t use much CPU.

Where you’re seeing the Agent or Helper using a lot of your available CPU, we suggest clearing the cache on your browser and/or desktop app. And if that doesn’t help, use an app cleaner to fully uninstall all Figma apps and then reinstall from our Downloads page.

Here’s how to clear the desktop app cache on a Mac:

Quit the Figma desktop app
Open Terminal.app and enter the following command:
rm -rf "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Figma/"{Desktop,DesktopProfile}
Try opening the desktop app again

And here’s how to clear the desktop app cache on Windows:

Close the Figma desktop app
Open the Start menu, and paste in this, followed by enter: %APPDATA%\Figma
In the window that opens, delete the Desktop and DesktopProfile folders if they exist
Launch the desktop app again

If this doesn’t help, can you reach out directly to our technical quality team here: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Please use your Figma account email, and let us know if this is affecting the Desktop app, browser or both, and provide a screenshot of your Activity monitor.

If this is affecting the Desktop app, please also save and send over your Desktop App debug info file. On Mac you can find this in the Help menu under Troubleshooting, and on Windows, you can find this under the toggle-arrow at the right of the top toolbar under Help > Troubleshooting.

Lastly, the community moderation team here on the forum does not own Figma_support, so please note that tagging this profile will not notify us.

Allan_Holmes

I am also having this problem

AbramAuthor

Have you been able to track down any reasons why it’s happening on your end? In the time since I’ve posted it I’ve had to resort to only keeping 1-2 files open at any given time and I’ve had to once again switch away from using Chrome (though in the instance captured by my screenshot, even Chrome wasn’t using excessive resources as it tends to do).

So the only variable right now is that I switched my browser to Microsoft Edge. Figma is still using massive resources but my system is doing slightly better with managing the memory pressure, though it’s using huge amounts of Swap which is concerning to me.

Tanay

I am also facing the same. And running figma on a 4k monitor (scaled down) makes it worse.

davidlopan

New Participant

I am also having this problem, Figma is choking and 10+ instances of this task are using ~8gb of RAM.

Faruk

Same problem here (MacBook Pro, 5K Display)

Jared_Zietsma

Similar issues over here

Anyone have a solution for this?

Jared_Zietsma

This is with a 4k monitor as well

Johan2

I am having the same issue. The figma renderer uses a lot of ram and I get the same problem either using chrome or safari. A temporary solution I found is to hide unused artboards but obviously this does not work for everyone.