Hey Everyone! It has come to our attention that there could be significant performance issues affecting Retool apps on Windows 11 devices and discovered a surprising culprit: Windows 11’s built-in “Efficiency Mode"(Reduce Process Interference with Task Manager Efficiency Mode - Performance and Diagnostics)”
This feature is designed to reduce power usage by throttling background processes. But it turns out Efficiency Mode can also throttle essential browser processes, including those used by Retool apps, even on high-end hardware.
In our investigating, we found that multiple Windows 11 machines (Intel and ARM), Retool app load times dropped from 7–12+ seconds to 2.5–4 seconds after bypassing Efficiency Mode. Performance improvements were also seen on non-Retool sites that rely heavily on GPU/CPU resources. A MacBook Pro with an M2 Max and Windows 11 machines (post-fix) had nearly identical load times.
Why It Matters:
• Efficiency Mode silently limits key browser subprocesses (like renderers and subframes used by Retool).
• It affects browsers like Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, even when power settings are set to “High Performance.”
• In Task Manager, you can temporarily disable Efficiency Mode per process, but this doesn’t persist and is difficult to manage due to multiple subprocesses.
Workaround:
One of the ways we discovered to bypass Efficiency Mode for your browser was to do the following(Reference):
1. Create a shortcut for your browser (e.g. Chrome or Edge).
2. Add this flag to the shortcut’s target: --disable-features=UseEcoQoSForBackgroundProcess
3. Make sure the browser isn’t set to run in the background when closed.
4. Always launch from this shortcut.
This prevents Efficiency Mode from throttling browser processes at startup and can dramatically improve performance for Retool apps.
Some users have also reported being able to disable this by going to Settings > System and performance > toggle Efficiency mode (Reference).
Final Notes:
• This issue is not specific to Retool but may disproportionately affect apps like Retool that rely on heavy client-side rendering.
• Microsoft doesn’t currently offer a full way to disable Efficiency Mode globally.
• If your organization uses Retool on Windows 11 machines, especially without discrete GPUs, this is worth testing if you are experiencing high load times.
• Since the throttling behavior is tied to Windows 11’s built-in Efficiency Mode, which is managed by the OS itself, there is NO control on the functionality/behavior from the Retool side.
Please feel free to share your findings or improvements if you’ve run into this too!