PDFpenPro - Freezing, slow rendering, excessive CPU usage (Apple M1)

[Bill Mosca]

I had an open ticket with Smile for PDFpenPro 13.1 (Mac). I have been experiencing consistent slow/unresponsive PDF rendering with concurrent high CPU utilization (nearly 100%) on an M1 MacBook Pro. I have tried a clean install of PDFpenPro without success. I'd submitted a process sample to Smile at their request. The product is essentially unusable currently. Please advise as to how I should proceed. 

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @Bill Mosca,

Thank you for reaching out to us through our Community Forums!

In order for me to further assist you with your concern, could you please provide the following?:

-Is the same issue present before upgrading from PDFpen Pro 12.x?

-Does this only happen with a single PDF file? If yes, how was this file created and what software was used (e.g. exported PDF from AutoCAD)?

Thank you very much in advance and I am looking forward to hearing back from you.

[Bill Mosca]

@AllainU, I first noticed this issue in late August while on verson 13.1. I did not notice the issue earlier versions. (I generally upgrade to the latest version immediately upon release.)

The issue is a general one. It can be reproduced with almost any PDF as far as I can see. 

[Bill Mosca]

Any further information available re: this issue?

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @Bill Mosca,

Thank you for your response and please note that we created a supported case in your behalf for better handling of your concern.

Thank you and we are looking forward to hearing from you soon through the support ticket.

Cheers!

[Francois Menard]

I am also experiencing this excessive CPU Usage on a Mac M1 with 13.1. I have retreated back to PDFPen 12.2 which will run under Rosetta without issue.  Is Nitro serious about PDFPen ?

 

F.

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @Francois Menard,

Thank you for reaching out to us through our Community Forums and our sincere apologies for this inconvenience.

With regard to this excessive CPU usage, is it also happening by just opening the program without any PDFs or when any PDFs is open?

Have you also tried performing a MAC updates to see if that will help?

Thank you very much in advance and I am looking forward to hearing back from you.

[Paul Strasma]

I am experiencing the same problem. PDFPen Pro 13.1 is periodically freezing up on my M1 MacBook running OS 11.6. The application display fails to render the page, the CPU goes to 100% but the application doesn't indicate not responding in the Force Quit dialogue box.

This problem did not occur with PDFPen Pro 12.x.

[Allain Umailin]

Hi @Francois Menard,

I trust you are doing great and you had a wonderful weekend.

Are you still experiencing the same issue? If yes, could you please provide answers to my previous post?

 

Hello @Paul Strasma,

Thank you for reaching out to us through our Community Forums!

To further assist you with your concern, Nitro Support team decided to created a support ticket on your behalf.

For better case handling, kindly respond to the email message that was sent to you through the support case.

Cheers!

[Francois Menard]

Hello Allain, I trust that all of us which have put their faith  in PDF Pen for several years, are absolutely wondering whether Nitro is committed to the product. I have de-installed PDFPen on my iPad after I have observed it is corrupting PDF files and migrated to PDF Expert there. I am seriously considering doing the same across the board. If it wasn't for Monterey 12.01 on my Mac mini solving the instability problem of version 13.1, I would have all but pulled the plug.  To be fair, you can close the ticket.  It seems to be stable since upgrading to MacOS 12.01.  However, I am absolutely not convinced that I am in good hands.  F.

 

[Ian Mawhinney]

On 9/10/2021 at 10:10 PM, Bill Mosca said:

I had an open ticket with Smile for PDFpenPro 13.1 (Mac). I have been experiencing consistent slow/unresponsive PDF rendering with concurrent high CPU utilization (nearly 100%) on an M1 MacBook Pro. I have tried a clean install of PDFpenPro without success. I'd submitted a process sample to Smile at their request. The product is essentially unusable currently. Please advise as to how I should proceed. 

I have this same problem - PDFPenPro is unusable on M1 Mac. I love the program but cannot work with it unless a fix is found

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @Ian Mawhinney,

Thank you for reaching out to us through our Community Forums and our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.

For the sake of troubleshooting, could you please update your Mac OS to Monterey 12.0.1? 

Once done, is the freezing issue still present with working with your PDFpenPro 13.x?

Thank you very much in advance and I am looking forward to hearing back from you.

[Paul Strasma]

In response to my prior case, Nitro support opened a ticket for me and provided instructions for performing a clean install. The instructions included the following acknowledgement of the problem, "For your kind information, continuous freezing or high CPU utilization and cannot properly launch the app or use PDFpen, it is possible PDFpen is stuck in a crash loop."

Unfortunately, the problem recurred a few days later and I was chose to switch over to Adobe Acrobat temporarily.

I have now updated to Mac OS Monterey 12.0.1 and can confirm that the freezing issue is still present.

 

[Martin Chard]

I have had this problem since upgrading to 13.  Lastest MacOS, M1 Mac mini 16gb.  App freezes, does not scroll, does not render pages.   Reinstalled with same issues.

Did not realise others having the same problem - is there a fix?

[adam stein]

This has been happening to me, too. I've been using PDFPen Pro for years and years and have always been happy with it. Recently, I've had documents stay fuzzy and refuse to render, and sometimes the app freezes altogether and I can't even get the menu bar to show up (I have it hidden by default on my Mac) and have to force quit. 

 

I'm on Monterey 12.0.1 and PDFPenPro 13.1. 

 

Is PDFPenPro going to be supported and updated regularly by Nitro for M1 Macs? 

 

Is there a good solution now for this problem? I thought that upgrading to 13 would help but this is still happening. Should I try the clean install approach? 

 

thanks, 

Adam 

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @Martin Chard & @adam stein,

Our sincere apologies for this inconvenience and rest assured we are still investigating this issue on our end.

Once there is an update, we will let everyone know as soon as possible.

Thank you for your understanding and stay safe always.

[adam stein]

Ok thanks Allain!

[Bill Mosca]

On 9/10/2021 at 2:10 PM, Bill Mosca said:

I had an open ticket with Smile for PDFpenPro 13.1 (Mac). I have been experiencing consistent slow/unresponsive PDF rendering with concurrent high CPU utilization (nearly 100%) on an M1 MacBook Pro. I have tried a clean install of PDFpenPro without success. I'd submitted a process sample to Smile at their request. The product is essentially unusable currently. Please advise as to how I should proceed. 

Excessive CPU utilization and slow/frozen PDF rendering is a recurring issue for us. It appears to be confined to M1 chips. 

I would appreciate a status update beyond "we are still investigating." It has been five months since I first reported this to Smile prior to acquisition by Nitro. It has now been almost three months since I reported (via this topic) to Nitro. It's clear that others are also experiencing a similar or identical issue on M1 chips. 

As much as we'd like to stick with PDFpenPro (and avoid Acrobat), I'm almost to the point of pulling the plug on PDFpenPro, a product that our company has relied on for years, and requesting a refund for licenses purchased after we originally reported this issue to Nitro. 

[John Quiggin]

It's now January, and still nothing.  I am now abandoning PDFPenPro, and going back to Acrobat :-(.  Very disappointed in Nitro

[adam stein]

So sad...

I really hate acrobat and I've loved pdfpen (pro) for so long so I'm willing to give it a little more time but Nitro, we really need to hear from you that you're invested in adding features or at the very least maintaining this long lasting beloved app with a big following. 

 

I had the freezing pixelated PDFs problem a few times yesterday and had to force quit. Any solutions for us? Shall we all try the suggestion about deleting some pref files? Does that solve it?

 

Adam 

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @adam stein @John Quiggin @Martin Chard @Francois Menard @Ian Mawhinney,

Thank you for your posts and our sincerest apologies that the issue described in this forum thread is still happening.

Please be aware that we have created support cases for each of you to gather logs that would help our product team in implementing a fix.

 

Hello @Paul Strasma,

I hope you are doing fine today.

We have also created a new support case on your behalf as we would like to revisit this issue and get some logs from your device.

 

Again, our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience this has caused everyone and we are looking forward to hearing from each of you through the support cases we created.

Thank you for your understanding and stay safe always.

Edited January 27, 2022 by Allain Umailin

[Richard Aube]

I share the same problems too:
(Excessive CPU utilization and slow/frozen PDF rendering).

Looking forward for a fix...

Monterey 12.2

PDFPenPro 13.1

Edited February 4, 2022 by Richard Aube

[Rafael Cobos]

I share the same problem: i can be working away and, unfortunately, the program freezes and works very slowly. I have to force quit the program to restart my work. I'm working on the latest Mac OS (12.2) and PDFPenpro version (13.1).

[Bill Mosca]

It's time to bid PDFpenPro goodbye after many years as a contented user. It's been seven months since I reported this issue to Smile (just prior to acquisition by Nitro) and five months since I reported it directly to Nitro and initiated this thread. I've provided Nitro with process samples and other analytics. No signs of a forthcoming fix and not so much as a minor update since the product was acquired last July. So I'm--very very reluctantly--headed back to Acrobat. Nitro, it seems, wasn't a good home for PDFpenPro after all. 

[adam stein]

very sad to hear that from you, Bill. Thanks for starting this thread and sticking it out for so long. I'm going to trudge along for a while myself... I've been using PDFPen for so long and really like using it for many reasons (even though I don't use a whole lot of the features) and I really really don't like using Adobe. 

But... I have still been experiencing PDFs that don't get sharp on the mac, and I have to force quit and reopen the app, and a few days ago, I even had some open blank over and over in the iPad version. 

 

Adam