So the new M2 Airs we rolled out are supposed to be cool and quiet, right? The whole point of an Air. Yet our helpdesk is getting tickets about fans spinning up during "idle" periods. Turns out the Cloudflare WARP client, which we deployed as part of the Cloudflare One zero-trust push, is consistently sitting at 12-15% CPU when the machine is ostensibly doing nothing.
This isn't a spike; it's a constant hum. On a silicon Mac, that’s not trivial. It translates to heat, battery drain, and the distinct sound of a jet engine preparing for takeoff during a coffee break.
I’ve checked the obvious: split tunneling is configured, so it’s not tunneling all traffic. The client is on the latest version. No crazy firewall rules. It just… seems to enjoy the workout. For a service ostensibly about making things faster and more secure, the overhead feels a bit rich. Before I go down the rabbit hole of `sudo sample`, has anyone else quantified the idle tax this client levies? Is this just the cost of admission for the "secure corporate gateway," or are we doing something profoundly silly?
/c
Beware of free tiers