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I have a 2017 Macbook Pro (2.9GHz quad core i7 running Ventura macOS) that SUDDENLY has slowed down to a crawl. "top" shows less than 10% idle when no apps are running, but shows "WindowServer" consuming high CPU (>50%). I ran malwarebytes and found no malware. Not only computer performance is slow, but typing is delayed and network feels like on old dialup.

How can I troubleshoot whatever has suddenly taken up my CPU?

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    What happened leading up to the slowdown? Does rebooting the computer fix things, even temporarily? What do the Apple event or system logs have to say? Have you done a basic web search for "macos windowserver high cpu" or similar and read through any suggestions and/or tried them?
    – music2myear
    Commented May 22 at 17:35
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    Also this superuser.com/questions/1554274/… and this apple.stackexchange.com/questions/153397/…
    – music2myear
    Commented May 22 at 17:36
  • Yes, rebooting does fix things temporarily and the computer is lightning fast initially. The problem begins a few minutes after I start a web browser (ANY browser not just one, like Chrome, Edge or Brave), suddenly "top" percent idle goes from 95% to ~10%. then after quiting the browser, the problem goes away awhile after. Interestingly I get a few minutes of lightning fast web browsing before the problem starts! So the macbook is capable of handling the normal web browsing, and there is no special website that triggers it either.
    – javaguy
    Commented May 23 at 1:26
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    So the problem isn't your computer slowing down to a crawl but something that happens only when using a web browser (details matter). Before any further considerations please always add any requested information or clarification to the question itself, not just comments, by editing it. No, unfortunately, you neither answered 2/3 of what @music2myear asked nor acknowledged the informative links he provided. FYI, Chrome, Edge, Brave, despite their superficial differences, are the same, Chromium based, browsers. The only mainstream browsers that are different (i.e. not Chromium based) (...)
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented May 23 at 7:12
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    (...) are Firefox and Apple's own Safari that I suggest you try for comparison. If you have bothered reading what was already provided and/or did your own research you'd have by now an idea about what may be happening. Last, but not least, you may need to reinstall the OS and troubleshoot from there while avoid too much customization like having widget-like things that tend to refresh a lot and testing the performance with native software (e.g. Safari) instead of 3rd party apps, etc.
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented May 23 at 7:17

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