Skip to content

Redstone Desktop 0.2.4

Choose a tag to compare

View all tags
@ngocanhnckh ngocanhnckh released this 27 Aug 04:12
· 5 commits to main since this release
v0.2.4
7d39c1f

Chases down a report of the desktop window "flashing like crazy". It was neither
a reload nor a connection problem: while it happens the page runs no JavaScript
at all — LayoutCount: 0, ScriptDuration: 0.00s over 20 seconds — but the GPU
process sits at 33–50% of a CPU core.

The cause is in the web app. Four decorative background elements animate scale
while carrying filter: blur(90–110px), infinitely, unpromoted. Scaling a
blurred element cannot reuse its raster, so the browser recomputes the blur
every frame. Pausing exactly those four animations and changing nothing else:

GPU process, animations running:  46.1%  45.0%  41.1%  47.8%  50.2%  43.8%
GPU process, animations paused:   35.6%   0.3%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%

Added

  • "Pause decorative background animation" in desktop settings, off by
    default. Only infinite animations on blurred elements are paused, so
    spinners and progress indicators still move. A mitigation, not a fix — the web
    app's own change supersedes it.
  • Instrumentation for what the shell previously could not see: sustained
    renderer and GPU CPU, the page's console warnings and errors (deduplicated so
    a loop cannot flood the log), and request rate per path with websocket redials
    counted separately. Each was verified firing against a deliberately broken
    page rather than assumed to work.

Fixed

  • An HTML error page from a proxy is summarised with its status and title
    instead of a wall of markup — which immediately made a real failure legible:
    /folders/.../files failed with 524 — 524: A timeout occurred.

Note for whoever runs the window

The desktop app keeps backgroundThrottling: false because the notification
event stream must not be throttled while the window is hidden. A browser tab in
the background gets its animations throttled; this window does not — so an
animation like the one above costs a CPU core even while the app is minimised.

Which file

You have Download
Mac, Apple Silicon (M1-M4) Redstone-0.2.4-arm64.dmg
Mac, Intel Redstone-0.2.4-x64.dmg
Windows Redstone-Setup-0.2.4.exe
Linux, x86_64 Redstone-0.2.4-x86_64.AppImage or redstone-desktop_0.2.4_amd64.deb
Linux, arm64 Redstone-0.2.4-arm64.AppImage or redstone-desktop_0.2.4_arm64.deb

macOS builds are signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized, app and disk
image both. Windows and Linux are unsigned; SmartScreen will ask once.

Assets 19
Loading