MacBook heats up with R25a and 25b

I’ve noticed that my MacBook heats up quickly when using MATLAB R2025a or R2025b, even with light tasks such as editing scripts or small plots. The CPU usage remains high in Activity Monitor, and sometimes background MATLAB processes continue running after I close the app. This behavior wasn’t present in R2024b, which ran much cooler on the same machine. I’m I’m using [ macOS Sequoia and 24 Gb. MathWorks has acknowledged and they confirmed that developers are working on it for almost 9 months. MATLAB is a great software and I do not want to loose it. I cannot use either 25a or 25b yet.Any guidance appreciated.

[Stephen23]

"Any guidance appreciated."

Advise TMW of this behavior: https://www.mathworks.com/support/contact_us.html

[Prashant joshi]

Thanks. I have been doing it for the last 9 months. Thanks. If anybody experienced it and have some solutions to address?

[dpb]

"MathWorks has acknowledged and they confirmed that developers are working on it..."

That's all the power (so to speak) users have to control what Mathworks does and when.

The zombie processes issue has been noted before; I don't recall seeeing anybody mention the CPU temp problem before, however.

About all you can do as the user is to experiment about trying to kill MATLAB-related processes and see which (if any) can successfully be stopped without stopping the main program and see if one of those is the prime CPU hog. Details of CPU usage by process would be most helpful in exploring.

Does it run hot if just open a clean MATLAB session after closing MATLAB and then ensuring all the background processes are also closed?

[Prashant joshi]

I can tell you that it is not a zombie issue for me! They may be more/ majority window users, other may have not reported or there may be a mass migration to Python or may be the problem limited to certain MacBook. I do not know, I prefer rather , do not jump to any conclusion, but the problem is real. Thanks!

[dpb]

I don't doubt it being real but unfortunately given that MATLAB is a commercial proprietary product, the ability of the user to affect things such as this is essentially nil unless one can isolate a particular thread or background process that isn't otherwise critical that is the power hog. That, also unfortunately, is not a high probablility event, granted.

I suggested the above because had experience that years ago Intuit distributed a 3rd party corollary app with the desktop Quickbooks product that was supposed to speed up access and searches, etc., etc., ... It had the symptom of maxing out the CPU and driving temp up beyond the ability of the fans to make up cooling air. Fortunately, the product ran just fine without the add-on. One wonders if some of the startup code or the like is happening with MATLAB.

About all one can do is continue to ping official support; it will be interesting to see if any others chime in with similar experience. In the olden days, one of the ways the symptom could be created was to code a continuous program loop with a polling request for a keystorke instead of using interrputs. One would certainly not think Mathworks has fallen back into that particular trap, but something of the ilk must be happening.

Certainly, it is always a possibility that there is some particular unique combination of specific CPU, OS, peripherals, etc., that triggers an unexpected result.

[John D'Errico]

Interestingly, this is not a problem at all on my Mac Studio. The fans keep it always at a reasonable temp. (I'm using Macs Fan Control 1.5.19 to monitor temps. It is free.) But there is also no heavy background CPU usage. Laptops carry their own set of issues of course, and I'll admit my system is less than portable. ;-)

Answer 1

[Mike Croucher]

I am sorry you are experience this. I have an M2 Mac and am running various versions of MATLAB including R2025a and R2025b without any heating issues.

We would be very interested in working with you to debug the issue. Please feel free to get back in touch with our support team who will work with you to figure out what is going on.

[Prashant joshi]

I have M2 MAc, Mid 2023. Thanks. I reached out to the support team, and they are working. I appreciate your response.