Google pushed out a small Chrome OS update at the tail end of June, and now Chromebook users are seeing performance issues as a result. One of the chief issues is absurdly high CPU usage that can slow your Chromebook to a crawl.
Chrome OS version 91.0.4472.147 dropped last week, bringing with it the usual cadre of bug fixes and security updates for the bigger Chrome OS update pushed through at the beginning of June.
As the update hit, users started to file bug reports and post publicly about experiencing slowed down Chromebooks and severe lag. In the official bug report, users submitted screenshots of the Diagnostics app, showing the CPU locked up at high usage rates and topping out at the maximum rate. If the operating system is throttling the processor all that much, it makes it virtually useless when trying to navigate anywhere else in Chrome OS.
But the bug doesn’t seem to affect all Chromebooks. The reports come primarily from Grunt and Hatch devices, both internal code names used to refer to specific boards within certain models of Chromebooks. This makes it easy to isolate which of the available models might be affected by the bug. AboutChromebooks has a handy list of all the possible models in no particular order:
Grunt-based Chromebooks:
HP Chromebook 14
Acer Chromebook 315
HP Chromebook 11a G6 EE
Lenovo 14e Chromebook
Acer Chromebook 311
Acer Chromebook Spin 311
Lenovo 100e 2nd-gen AMD
Lenovo 300e 2nd-gen AMD
Hatch-based Chromebooks:
Acer Chromebook 712
Lenovo Ideapad Flex 5
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook and Chromebook 2
Asus Chromebook Flip C435
If you’re curious, you can check which board your Chromebook uses by cross-referencing this list of devices or by typing chrome://version into your Chromebook’s address bar. Look three lines down, next to Platform. The name of your board is at the end.
Not all the devices listed above suffer from the issue that’s apparently plaguing the version 91.0.4472.147 update. But unless you can afford to spend your free time filing bug reports, you might want to ignore the notifications to update your software, at least for a few more days. Also avoid shutting down your Chromebook so as not to trigger automatic updates. If you want to know when the coast is clear, you can bookmark the official bug report, which is effectively a large thread on the goings-on of this particular version.