I can’t follow up with a debug log right now but I can confirm that there’s something weird going on while on the homescreen, it’s definitely less fluent (on RPI2) after this update.
I noticed the same, but I have no previous data to be sure, but I saw that now Kodi process is always with 40-50% CPU and I thought that that was more than before. I searched “CPU” and saw that this is not only my thought, finding this post.
But today I performed a rollback to a backup pre-update because I had some freeze since the update. I saw some messages in dmesg of “Out of memory, killing Kodi”, but I was not in front of kodi when it freeze. I don’t know if all the freeze was correlated wtith a “out of memory”, but I can say since the update the people that use my Raspberry with OSMC say to me that it freeze’s and they need to restart the Raspberry (they are only Kodi users, for they Kodi freeze = raspberry freeze, no ssh check or other thing).
So as I said, i performed a rollback to my backup and I can confirm that pre-update Kodi usage is 22-23% in the main menu, at the same point where an updated Kodi uses 40-50%: in the TV Shows section
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exactly !
The main thing I’m seeing in the main menu is stuttering, it’s not fluent, I checked fps and it drops to around 10…
I noticed the same issue with continuous high-CPU utilization by the Kodi process, in fact I first noticed it in late July / early August after upgrading my OSMC / HiFiBerry digi-pro build to Raspberry a 3 (from a Raspberry 2 where normal CPU utilization on iddle was 5%).
Right after the upgrade in the Kodi process was stuck on 25% CPU utilization on idle. In my case, this is a headless audio server; for the fist time ever OSMC/raspberry/digi-pro occassionally had audio dropouts when playing HD Audio (24/96) content.
Then after the August OSMC upgrade, it got worst, with the Kodi process stuck on 45% CPU utilization.
I can also confirm that as soon as one navigates out of the main menu (e.g. navigating to “Music”), idle CPU utilization drops to normal levels (hovering around 4-5%). Something weird, possibly OSMC skin related, easy to reproduce.
Hoping this can be addressed.
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which program do you use to visualize?
To see per-process CPU %, ssh into the box and use “top” after the box has been sitting idle for a few minutes. That’s the source for the the normal baseline for the kodi.bin process I mentioned (~5%) and the weird changes after the last couple of OSMC updates (25% and now 45%, while on the home screen)
Nobody tested if the Kodi 18 Alfa has the same problem?
Or in other system like LibreElect? To discard if this is Kodi or OSMC problem.
But well, with this situation I supose that i will continue with my July update at least until Kodi 18 (I want RetroPlayer!). Now Kodi 17 is very stable (but still works worse than Kodi 16, but nobody cares if you can’t use a addon from the official repo to demostrate it)
Edit: I was now readin all the post. My 40-50% CPU utilization was with Estuary withouth any mods (no skinshourtcuts addon). In the “TV Shows” section with covers and thumbnails.
Now, after rollback to july, it is with 23% CPU.
That’s the same I noticed - July / 23%, using the OSMC with default skin and no customization, and no plugins/add-ons (audio-only build)
Before that, the idle CPU consumption by the Kodi process was around 5%, like today when navigating out of the home screen.
With ‘top’ showing 23% in a quad-core CPU - that means that one of the cores is running at close to 100% utilization. Similarly, 45% seems to imply that two cores are running with full utilization. Something went wrong in July and then got worsened August
With top you can click 1 and see per core utilization.
I didn’t see any change in July, for me Kodi always used about 2x% in main menu (wit confluence and estuary)
I have the same feeling that the main menu is much “laggier” than before…
Is there anything we can do to further investigate this issue and help to fix it?
I see the same here about 40ish% usage on a Vero 4K, just sitting in the menu as Kodi keeps rendering (Naturally 100% if I add an RSS ticker that scrolls). That is just Kodi as it never idles here and keeps rendering (even when a “black screen” screensaver is used. The UI part is very archaic when it comes to rendering - independent of the OS or the hardware you use. It’s bad, but always has been. And new bugs as it seems in recent updates…
It is ridiculous that sitting in the menu consumes more resources than playing a movie. Sure, on some skins worse than on other, but in the end it is a general design issue of Kodi itself that comes from its XBMC roots (the rendering loop acts like a game).
The best way to fix this problem would be probably some kind of fake sleep mode, where Kodi is exited when Kodi should send the box to sleep (which is not supported e.g. on the Vero) and optionally HDMI turned off. Basically a workaround for an annoying Kodi issue that will never be addressed.
Instead of directly restarting Kodi the mediacenter scripts waits to be woken up by a key press event from the remote before restarting Kodi.
I am currently trying to figure out how to do this on my box as I find the CPU utilization just annoying if no one is using the box even if the power consumption in the end is total negligible. Probably need to throw in a program that does that for me in the mediacenter script, which is called when Kodi exited before the restart. Probably with some parameters what it should do.
As said some kind of basic fake sleep mode is what I want to create here to work around Kodi once and for all here - if not used it should not run or be halted as it doesn’t really idle on its own.
But yeah, in the end it is a shortcoming of Kodi that exists forever…
I was facing same issue, ~50% CPU usage of kodi.bin in idle on home/main screen menu.
What worked for me (as temporary workaround) was removing Radio an Live TV items from Main Menu.
Settings → Interface → Skin → - Configure skin… → Home → Customise Home Menu
(choose/select item to remove and delete it)
I experimented which items causes this issue for me (found 2 mentioned) and might be different for others, just want to add my 2 cents here 
This is my complete (well, almost, without mentioning exact add-ons) list of Main Menu Items with no high CPU ussage:
- Favourites
- 1st 3rd party video Add-on
- 2nd 3rd party video Add-on
- 3rd 3rd party video Add-on
- 4th 3rd party video Add-on
- Videos
- Music
- Programs
- My OSMC
- Settings
- Power
Maybe this info will help someone.
All the reporting I’ve made was also without any video add-on or even music sub-menu.
I’ve even tried and disabled movies, tv shows and my osmc from main menu and the results are the same: keeping 40% cpu usage at the main menu level. (I just didn’t tried taking out everything from the main menu, but I suspect the result would be the same)
After so many answers and contributions in this thread, I can make na educated guess that it is “something” at the main menu rendering level.
@sam_nazarko
I’ve managed to accidentally fix this.
I ran the OSMC update yesterday and when it got to a point where it was updating cache the stuttering stopped and everything was working as normal.
Btw there were no updates available, so the only thing that happened was updating of the cache.
My theory is that for some people there might be a slight corruption of cache that is causing higher CPU usage on homescreen and lowered FPS.
Right now my RPI2 is working as before.
Maybe you can enlighten us, which “cache” are you talking about?
Are you talking about the apt cache? Would not have any influence on Kodi using more CPU
That was just my guess, I’m not that tech savvy to really figure this out.
The cache that I was talking about was the one that gets updated during the OSMC update process.
It didn’t make too much sense to me, that’s why I wrote the whole process.
Same happening here. High cpu usage in the main menu but lower in other. Mi raspberry pi 3 is reaching 80°C doing nothing and I’m starting to worry. What it’s going on? It’s weird… I run top in ssh and the process kodi.bin is eating lot of resources. Please fix this, sorry for my English.
Can you change to Estuary skin to check if your issue is totally gone than?