Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle that severely degrades performance
## Description After using the cowork feature, Claude Desktop becomes extremely slow - slow startup, UI lag, and slow responses. Performance degrades over time even during a single session. ## Investigation ### VM Bundle (10GB) The cowork feature creates a VM bundle at: ``` ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/vm_bundles/claudevm.bundle/rootfs.img ``` This file grows to **10GB** and is never cleaned up. It regenerates quickly after deletion (deleted one day, back to 10GB the next). ### Cleanup Test Results Deleted vm_bundles, Cache, and Code Cache directories (reduced from 11GB to 639MB). **Result: ~75% faster immediately after cleanup on tasks that previously failed/hung.** ### Performance Degradation Over Time Even after cleanup (VM bundle at 0 bytes), performance degrades within minutes: - Immediately after restart: ~24% CPU at idle - After several minutes of use: ~55% CPU (renderer at 24%, main at 21%, GPU at 7%) - Swap activity increases (swapins climbing from 20K to 24K+) This suggests a memory leak or accumulating work that causes degradation regardless of VM bundle state. ## Environment - macOS (Darwin 25.2.0) - Claude Desktop (latest) - 8GB system RAM ## Observed Behavior - High CPU at idle (~24-55% combined across processes) - Heavy swap activity that increases over time - Performance degrades within minutes of use - 10GB VM bundle regenerates after every cowork session - Tasks that failed before cleanup now complete (75% faster initially) ## Workaround
Posted by mjbyt on Feb 2, 2026, 12:53 PM
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Raise real-world problems, find people facing the same issue, and discuss solutions.2,000 issues0 comments
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To be fair, Inform7 can't succeed, generally, because there is no market for the kind of games that you create with Inform7.
New> The notion that somehow LR reliability is misunderstood by Consumer Reports, JD Power, Car & Driver, Automobile etc.
Custom trigger IDs are not displayed in the new 2026.10 trigger selector
I hate that too, but I think it’s more the ux than the concept of a default.
> The biggest problem with UX developers is they know better than you AND force you into their paradigm.
"Focus follows mouse" is what I use to keep the file manager from popping up when click-dragging files.
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Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle that severely degrades performance
## Description After using the cowork feature, Claude Desktop becomes extremely slow - slow startup, UI lag, and slow responses. Performance degrades over time even during a single session. ## Investigation ### VM Bundle (10GB) The cowork feature creates a VM bundle at: ``` ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/vm_bundles/claudevm.bundle/rootfs.img ``` This file grows to **10GB** and is never cleaned up. It regenerates quickly after deletion (deleted one day, back to 10GB the next). ### Cleanup Test Results Deleted vm_bundles, Cache, and Code Cache directories (reduced from 11GB to 639MB). **Result: ~75% faster immediately after cleanup on tasks that previously failed/hung.** ### Performance Degradation Over Time Even after cleanup (VM bundle at 0 bytes), performance degrades within minutes: - Immediately after restart: ~24% CPU at idle - After several minutes of use: ~55% CPU (renderer at 24%, main at 21%, GPU at 7%) - Swap activity increases (swapins climbing from 20K to 24K+) This suggests a memory leak or accumulating work that causes degradation regardless of VM bundle state. ## Environment - macOS (Darwin 25.2.0) - Claude Desktop (latest) - 8GB system RAM ## Observed Behavior - High CPU at idle (~24-55% combined across processes) - Heavy swap activity that increases over time - Performance degrades within minutes of use - 10GB VM bundle regenerates after every cowork session - Tasks that failed before cleanup now complete (75% faster initially) ## Workaround
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