DisplayFusion RSS: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 06:22:08 GMT

Hello,
I was planning to record a video to demonstrate the issue, but it no longer appears to occur—even with DisplayFusion running and application hooking not excluded.
Previously, the problem was consistently reproducible, but I have not made any configuration changes since then.
It’s possible that an update to either DisplayFusion or another system component resolved the conflict while I had the application disabled.
There may have been some form of incompatibility or interference at the time.
At this point, it seems I can resume using DisplayFusion without issues.
That said, I’ll continue to monitor the situation for a while to see if the problem returns.
Thank you very much for your assistance and support.

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 15:09:44 GMT

Chrome seems to work fine here, can you send me a video of the issue?

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 00:41:25 GMT

The first time I noticed the issue was with Google Chrome.
When moving the window itself, or detaching and merging tabs, you can clearly see that the application's refresh rate drops significantly.

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 17:50:31 GMT

Some apps don't like us hooking into them, what apps are you noticing this with?

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 09:37:48 GMT

I believe my PC also falls into the high-end category, so there shouldn't be any hardware-related performance issues.
It has a 9950X3D, 64GB of RAM, and an RTX 5090.
The problem seems to be related to DisplayFusion’s hooking mechanism.

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 18:51:18 GMT

I've read almost the entire post, disabled the taskbars, etc. I have an i9 with 36 cores and 128 GB of RAM. After suffering for over a year and no updates, I've decided to uninstall Display Fusion. It's a dream to really feel the speed of this computer, and to forget all those laggy windows and trading software where the clock sometimes freezes for two seconds because everything is so laggy.

What I wanted to add and what I noticed is that my processor was running at a much lower frequency with Display Fusion, sometimes at 1.7 - 1.8 GHZ, so actually idle. I just checked, now it's fluctuating much higher, 2.80 GHZ - 3.2 GHZ, which I find very noticeable.

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 23:53:04 GMT

Understood.
I'll attach this and reply.
Now that I know the cause, I’ve decided not to run Display Fusion until it’s fixed, since configuring settings individually for each app is too much trouble.
I hope this gets resolved in a future update.

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 16:42:01 GMT

Could you send me a copy of your troubleshooting info? Here are the steps:

Open the DisplayFusion Settings > Troubleshooting tab
Click the "Export Info to File" button
Reply with the file attached

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 22:17:05 GMT

It seems that the issue was resolved by following the steps mentioned above:
Settings > Compatibility > [Target App] > Disable Application Hooking.
Toggling this setting on or off seems to improve or worsen the situation.

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 21:34:46 GMT

I’ve recently encountered a major issue with window display performance in Windows. While not affecting all applications, it significantly impacts certain ones. After investigating, I identified Display Fusion as the likely cause and came across this place during my research.

The issue involves a substantial drop in the refresh rate or update frequency of the affected windows.

In my case, the multi-monitor taskbar feature had already been disabled before the problem started, yet it still seemed to be affecting things. Interestingly, enabling the multi-monitor taskbar once and then disabling it again seemed to resolve the problem.

Or so I thought...
It seems the issue hasn’t actually been resolved after all.
It appeared to have improved, but once more windows were opened, the problem returned.
When I exit Display Fusion, the issue goes away.

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 19:22:29 GMT

I had the same issue and solved it by disabling Multi-Monitor Taskbars in the DF Taskbar settings panel. Both Windows 10 and Windows 11 offer enough multi-monitor functionality for my needs. I use DF for many of its other features, but I don't see a significant advantage to the taskbar implementation. And it's defintely great to avoid sluggishness when using the Windows taskbars.

If you encounter slow performance, especially after an extended period of use, I highly recommend starting by disabling this option (DF Settings -> Taskbar -> uncheck "Enable Multi-Monitor Taskbars (show a taskbar on each Monitor)").

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 13:52:23 GMT

@Amped, thanks for the details about how to turn off application hooks. Not sure what OS you're using, but I've just implemented the Compatbility changes for Task Manager and Explorer on my Win10 system. I have high hopes this will fix things. Explorer is always an issue, and yeah, Taskmgr sends fans into takeoff mode, but I've come to just tolerate that one. Thanks again!

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 08:49:41 GMT

Quote:

I've got the same exact issue. I ended up building a completely new computer because I couldn't figure out what was causing the issue. The new computer had the same problem. It's something I've dealt with for over a year... having to restart every day otherwise it was lag-city, but the DisplayFusion process never really indicated high CPU or RAM usage so I never considered it the culprit. I finally got so fed up that I just started uninstalling programs one by one, as soon as I uninstalled DisplayFusion the problem stopped and has not returned.

I tried the latest beta version and it didn't help. I'm using Windows 11 with 2 monitors that use 2 different resolutions. AMD CPU and RTX4090 GPU, if that matters. I'd love to be able to use this software again but after having the same issue with 2 different computers there must be a major bug somewhere.

EDIT: To expand on the issues I was having, windows explorer and the taskbar would freeze and/or crash, the CPU would suddenly soar to 100% CPU for a few minutes and then eventually settle down somewhat, but the longer I had the system running the worse and more often the symptoms would get. After restarting it would work ok for a good 12 hours or better and then slowly the symptoms would return until the PC was unusable.

Do you have task manager open regularly? For me the issue only happened when I had it open and when I closed task manager it fixed the issue.

In the end, disabling application hooks for Task Manager and Explorer has compeletely fixed the issue. Go into Display Fusion settings, go to Compatibility and add an entry for taskmgr.exe and explorer.exe and disabled application hooks for both.

I haven't noticed any missing functionality but the issue is fixed after doing it. Hope it works for you too!

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:21:22 GMT

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 15:16:38 GMT

Hopefully within the next couple of weeks!

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 17:39:32 GMT

Quote:

Okay interesting, we're adding an advanced setting to our next beta that might help here so we'll let you know once it's released to test out.

Hi! Any idea when the next beta is planned? The high power/CPU is definitely an irritation for me, so I'm really looking forward to the next release. Thanks so much!

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 14:22:09 GMT

Ok scratch the above, it has just happened again with only Task Manager application hooks turned off. Will run a longer test with task manager and explorer turned off to see if that works still. It was fine for a day with both off, fine for maybe 2-3 hours with just task manager but has just suddenly started causing issues. I only noticed at first because CPU usage was higher than I expected and when I checked the application, it was Display Fusion using 9-10% of a 7800X3D

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 12:55:12 GMT

So disabling application hooks for both Task Manager and Explorer does fix the issue. Just as a test I removed Explorer so it was just the application hooks for Task Manager that were disabled like I tried before re-installing windows and this time the issue did not occur.

It's possible the re-install changed something or maybe I didn't disable application hooks correctly before. It was a while ago now so I don't remember clearly. I guess we just go off the assumption that it was human error on my end and disabling application hooks on just task manager does fix the issue. The alternative is that there's mutliple issues and reinstalling windows fixes some of them which feels less likely than me just making a mistake.

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 17:51:15 GMT

Okay interesting, we're adding an advanced setting to our next beta that might help here so we'll let you know once it's released to test out.

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 17:46:25 GMT

Yes, disabling Titlebar Buttons noticeably decreases the power usage from Very high to Low. Unfortunately, my titlebar buttons are extremely important to how I use various windows. I'm rather meticulous in how I choose to position windows. Hopefully you'll find a fix for what causes the power usage.

Thanks so much!

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 14:11:59 GMT

If you disable titlebar buttons does that have any change in usage?

The Processes tab is likely taking the intervalled polling into account, the Details tab should give a more accurate value.

Thanks!

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 17:37:27 GMT

Quote:

@TTE Is it spiking and then dropping, or consisently high?

Typically, it's spiking and drops when I kill one or more of Explorer/Chrome/DisplayFusion. I'm currently not hearing my system fan go nuts, but I'm checking Task Manager to verify.
Still high, it seems.

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 17:22:21 GMT

@TTE Is it spiking and then dropping, or consisently high?

@AmpedNormal40968 Is it the same issue with Task Manager? If so can you try disabling hooks for Task Manager as well as Explorer in the Compatibility tab and see if that fixes it?

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 07:45:14 GMT

Well it was nice while it lasted, the issue has just returned this morning on my 4 day old install of windows. Anything else you want me to test?

RE: Display Fusion causing PC to become slow over time

Binary Fortress Software — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 15:34:41 GMT

Quote:

Can you do the following:

Open the Windows Task Manager
On the Details tab, right-click the column header and choose "Select columns"
Enable these columns: Handles, Threads, User Objects, GDI Objects
The next time this happens, send me a screenshot of those stats

Hi again. My system fans go into takeoff mode quite a lot recently. I've grabbed 3 sets of Task Manager screenshots I took on occasions when I had very high power usage and noticed DisplayFusion and Explorer and oftentimes Chrome consuming tons of power. Please let me know what I can do to alleviate this issue or if there's a version I can roll back to.

Thanks!