I got so annoyed by various apps (VScode, Chromium, Firefox, Thunderbird) burning CPU/GPU cycles and and making my laptop hot and sluggish with spinners on otherwise static content, that I made this little page to fight this.
echoangle2 days ago
Your claimed GPU usage seems really high for a simple spinner, even considering the CPU is pretty old. I wonder if there's some other problem going on with your setup.
nh2op2 days ago
I don't think so. This is just what happens when you redraw the screen.
Doing it 30x more frequent than needed costs more, no matter if it's only 1 pixel.
This problem is not isolated to me or to just one machine. Check out the chromium bug about the tab loading spinner, for example. It is a "simple" spinner as well.
Or the Zed editor, which spams screen redraws even when nothing changes at all, so it has high GPU usage for still picture.
adastra222 days ago
It should not cost a visible fraction of CPU/GPU to update a little sprite even at 30fps.
nh2op2 days ago
But it does. The GPU rerenders your entire screen with all its pixels, even if you change only one. The only thing you can do to avoid that is to not ask the GPU to render a frame. For that you need to reduce FPS.
SR2Z2 days ago
You need a fairly modern laptop to change the screen refresh rate like you're describing. Older laptops do 60Hz (or whatever) refreshes at all times, they can't change refresh rates like that. The compositor should only paint relevant pixels on the screen.
I'm sure that some spinners are horrible and peg the CPU, but unless your machine is older than ~2018 there is something wrong with your setup if spinners (and not intense operations behind them) cause your battery to suffer.
nh2opa day ago
I'm not describing anything about screen refresh rates, which I'm pretty sure are 60 Hz on my laptop even when the CPU+GPU are at 0% and don't draw anything. Compute != monitor refresh.
adastra22a day ago
Compositing is fast and energy efficient. The screen should not be doing a full refresh of the entire display for an isolated change.
Timon32 days ago
Did I totally miss how damage tracking has gone out of fashion, or what do you base this on?
nh2opa day ago
The damage tracking doesn't seem to be effective at reducing the computational cost. Measurement:
Opening https://nh2.me/low-fps-spinners/smooth-spinner.html it doesn't matter if I zoom the spinner to 25% or 500%: Despite the 400x difference in pixels redrawn, the "GPU Process" CPU usage in the "Browser" tab of the Chromium Shift+Esc task manager is equally high.
It only scales down the cost when reducing the FPS.
adastra22a day ago
I am also mystified at how far things have fallen.
Lord-Jobo2 days ago
I miss the 1 update per second animations of ye olden times, even if it would be ugly as sin in a modern product.
jy148982 days ago
I'm on mobile so I'm not able to check, but can the will-change and contain attributes reduce the cost?
nh2op2 days ago
Avoiding unnecessary browser repaint of the rest of the page is a basic technique and often already done correctly. If people don't do that, it's just ultra-bad.
But do really have the CPU/GPU go idle, you need to not use them; the only solution to that is to show still images, aka reduce FPS.
Diti2 days ago
Those aren’t spinners (also called numeric updowns, see [1]). Those are throbbers (also called loading icons, see [2]).
creatonez2 days ago
> [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinner_(computing)
Hah, I did not expect that. I can't imagine any end users will be able to name that one.
zaepa day ago
This is a rare instance where I think Wikipedia is plain wrong. Maybe the process to have multiple pages renamed is onerous? The thing in the original post I've usually heard to be called spinners, while this input element, which I'm not sure I've ever even seen, doesn't seem to have its name justified in any way on the Wikipedia page either. I can't really tell why it'd desperately need a concise name either, it's basically a numeric input with extra controls on it? anyhow, spinners spin and those spin so they're spinners, I won't hear otherwise.
Ditia day ago
Mozilla employees up until recently (2024), and research literature, seem to be calling them throbbers as well.
Anecdotally, I’ve only ever heard non-frontend developers call them “spinners”.
Maybe starting a discussion on the articles’ talk page could elicit some change? Language evolves, after all.
nh2opa day ago
> I’ve only ever heard non-frontend developers call them “spinners”
Such as these non-frontend devs?
noma day ago
spin boxes date back to windows 95 and were part of the windows common controls, often called spinners
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/...
I think they fell out of fashion after the scroll wheel was invented
pwdisswordfishq2 days ago
To be fair, those do spin, while "spinners" don't.
adastra222 days ago
That’s not how language works.
Diti2 days ago
That is how language works.
account422 days ago
The general public says: no.
4d4m2 days ago
Can this be done in a lightweight way that uses less resources at full speed?
Low fps seems jerky/retro?
nh2opa day ago
Probably no.
Does "Square ring" really look jerky/retro?
4d4ma day ago
Square ring and the 2x2 look smooth!
nonamesleft2 days ago
I truly wish i could get everything to use the ticking clock one at 1Hz (or maybe 0.5) for spinners, animation in user interfaces causes me anguish in general, so i have to go around filtering them on webapps.