Spyder version 4.2.3 lagging on Mac, OS Big Sur

Question

When I type in Spyder (Mac OS Big Sur), I am faced with some significant lag.

I have seen stack overflow posts that indicate that this problem was solved in a recent version of Spyder. However, when I updated Spyder to 4.2.3, my lag issue has persisted.

All typing takes 1-3 seconds to register and show up in both the console and any scripts I am writing. I have tried restarting repeatedly, and spyder has also shut down on its own. I am sure that is somehow related.

I have also tried following the steps in this link, but they did not work: https://docs.spyder-ide.org/current/faq.html#troubleshooting-macos-bigsur

Answer 1

I had the same problem (Macbook Pro 13" 2017 Big Sur 11.2.3), I even did a factory reset on my macbook. Once I had my computer fresh and clean, I downloaded Anaconda, launched Spyder 4.1.5 (the default one when you open Anaconda Navigator the first time) and it was laggy as usual. So I closed everything, opened the terminal and followed the FAQ steps :

conda create -n spyder-dev python=3
conda activate spyder-dev
conda install -c conda-forge spyder

Then

conda activate spyder-dev
export QT_MAC_WANTS_LAYER=1
spyder

Every forum i read said that the "QT_MAC_WANTS_LAYER=1" part solved the problem, so i had high expectations. But the lagging persisted (Spyder 4.2.5 , Python 3.9)

The final solution was to download the .dmg file app spyder has now, and it seems to be functioning without lag and without typing latency. Also it launches very quickly.

It's the only solution i know, hope it helps!