Matlab working very slow on my m1 MacBook Pro

Hi,

I downloaded 2020b update 5 version which said to be compatible with rosetta 2. Although I downloaded the right version matlab works incredibly slow I even cannot close the app. I tried to do what https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/262442-java-heap-space-out-of-memory-problem this problem says but even though I disabled the MathWorks Source Control Integration it still was slow. Is it about the java heap memory and how much should I inrease that? Thanks.

[Christopher Koch]

I have the same issue here. I even ramped up the java heap memory as much as possible. Still slow and not useable.

[Alara Altinkalem]

Yes me too.

[Walter Roberson]

People have been reporting problems since they installed the Big Sur OS update.

[MYMartin1206]

Same issue. Ended up going back to R2017b and it works much more smoothly on the M1 Air with the latest Big Sur update. Of course this won't help everyone, but might be worth a shot if you don't need any of the latest MATLAB features...

[Vaclav Stepan]

Updating to 2021 doesn't help.

[Caspar Hanselaar]

I have similar issues, increased heap size to 2112 MB, and matlab is excruciatingly slow even with no variables loaded, on Macbook M1 Air 16GB ram 512GB storage (380GB available)

[Thea Dianne Laylo]

Mine performs a quite faster when I work offline. if its an option for the type of your simulation, maybe go try it.

[Benjamin Cameron]

I could also only solve this by changing version to 2017b, so plus 1 to comment by MYMartin1206

Answer 1

[Weinan Wang]

In my case, the lag disappears if I start MATLAB from Terminal everytime. It's strange to see that while it could run good, it is running slow when started from the ususal App icon.

[Weinan Wang]

I start MATLAB by typing the following commmand in Terminal:

/Applications/MATLAB_R2021a.app/bin/matlab

[Vaclav Stepan]

Yes, I see this as well. Also, it hangs much more rarely.

[Yilang Xu]

Thanks! It fixed the frequent freeze issue.

[Vio Buchete]

Thanks, this solved the slow down/ freeze issue for me as well (on powervook M1 with Mac OS 11.5.2 Bug Sur.

Answer 2

[Steve Eddins]

See this answer and follow it for updates related to this problem.