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

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
June 7, 2021
107 replies
24590 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!

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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.

Show previous replies

Molham_Bakir

The video I shared was a case of a single frame that caused Figma total memory error. I tried to copy this frame by selecting it from the sidebar, not from the view/edit screen. Because the moment I move towards that frame and view it, the app will crash!

I pasted this frame into a new project file, I closed Figma and reopened the new one, and the app crashed again.

Chris48

New Member

Yeah, I wondered that about Renderer and number of files, but after I restarted the computer and restarted Figma with only one file open, I still got several instances of Renderer running 😕

Molham_Bakir

Did you try to copy & paste the link without the quotations ()? the link is working for me!
For some weird reason, the crash happens for only one frame! If you can send me your email address, I’ll share with you that Figma file

AbramAuthor

I was able to get it to work I just had to check from a personal machine (we don’t use Dropbox at work). Now THAT is something I’ve not experienced, that’s an interesting issue that one particular frame triggers the memory full issue. But I do feel like that’s a separate problem from what the rest of this thread is experiencing. You should definitely start a new thread for this one and gain some visibility!

Molham_Bakir

Thanks Abram

Deepak_Choudhary2

@Figma_Support are you listening to our pain?

I’m not even able to use my mac because of this. Since last week Figma started to consume a ton of memory out of nowhere. Haven’t experienced this before. The only change I made is to start using the Figma Tokens plugin. Wonder if that has to do anything with this.

user473

@Figma_Support help please

Rob10

@Figma_Support this issue is killing my productivity. Has anyone looked into it?

Chase_Stubblefield

Experiencing this too.

Karis_Robertson

I’m experiencing the same issue within Figma and also Chrome. By limiting all of my plug-in/extension access in Chrome the cpu usage of Chrome greatly decreased.

I thought hey, maybe this is the problem with Figma too? BUT, because you can’t edit Figma plug-in permission/usage, I deleted all of my plug-ins. It did the trick. Now I can use Figma, Zoom and Chrome simultaneously without any lag.

It’s not an elegant solution, and probably quite annoying for some (most?). I’m hoping Figma can create editable permissions for plug-ins so we can limit their background usage without having to delete them!

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