So I’ve run into this issue both as a user and as a developer – on MacBook Pros that have both a discrete and integrated GPU, fancy animations will cause the system to switch to the more powerful discrete GPU, reducing battery life. Chris Liscio wrote a great post explaining what’s going on and what to do about it (from a developer’s perspective). The key takeaway for most developers:

This whole problem can be very easy to solve. You just have to set NSSupportsAutomaticGraphicsSwitching key to YES in your application’s Info.plist. The trouble is that an OpenGL context is being created, which defaults to switching the dGPU on. Enabling this flag in the plist will very likely fix the problem on its own, as the frameworks should Do the Right Thing (more details below) if they need access to OpenGL.

Go read his whole post for all the details.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 16th, 2016 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Code, Development, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.