VS Code suddenly showing emulation warning and extremely slow on Mac M1

[0xCarnival]

VS Code suddenly showing emulation warning and extremely slow on Mac M1 Problem VS Code suddenly became extremely slow/laggy and now shows: "You are running an emulated version of Visual Studio Code. For better performance download the native arm64 version of Visual Studio Code build for your machine." Never seen this warning before after years of use on this machine. Downloaded ARM64 version - same issue persists. Environment

macOS: 15.4.1 (24E263) Hardware: Mac M1 VS Code: Latest from website

Tried

Restart Complete uninstall/reinstall Downloaded ARM64 version specifically All attempts = same slow performance + emulation warning

Question Why would VS Code suddenly switch to emulated mode? How to verify I'm actually getting the native ARM64 build?

[beccakotula]

This is happening to me on Mac as well, macOS: 14.6.1

[vjpb]

Same here, I can't even work on it! It's really slow, and I have a 15.3.2 (24D81) Apple M3 Pro.

[vjpb]

VS Code suddenly showing emulation warning and extremely slow on Mac M1 Problem VS Code suddenly became extremely slow/laggy and now shows: "You are running an emulated version of Visual Studio Code. For better performance download the native arm64 version of Visual Studio Code build for your machine." Never seen this warning before after years of use on this machine. Downloaded ARM64 version - same issue persists. Environment

macOS: 15.4.1 (24E263) Hardware: Mac M1 VS Code: Latest from website

Tried

Restart Complete uninstall/reinstall Downloaded ARM64 version specifically All attempts = same slow performance + emulation warning

Question Why would VS Code suddenly switch to emulated mode? How to verify I'm actually getting the native ARM64 build?

https://code.visualstudio.com/download# I resolved the problem by downloading the Apple Silicon version. Try doing the same; it might work for you as well. Just close all your VS Code windows and run the Apple Silicon version.

[deepak1556]

Can you share the output of lipo -info /Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron

[kanaymzk]

I have same issue too.

and my output is this

lipo -info /Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron Non-fat file: /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron is architecture: x86_64

I installed vscode by homebrew

[bsike]

I am having this same issue on an M1 macbook. My output for the lipo is: lipo -info /Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron Architectures in the fat file: /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron are: x86_64 arm64

I checked, and the "Get Info" in Finder for the .app says "Application (Universal)". I downloaded the latest vs-code version (1.101.1) specifying Apple Silicon, and it said "Application (Apple silicon)" as expected. However, this did not fix the issue.

I downloaded a previous vs-code version (1.100.1) for Apple Silicon, and it is working without this slowdown issue.

[JustinClark319]

Had this issue today. Sent vsCode to to trash from the finder, re-installed from vsCode website and all worked fine. Luckily all extensions and settings did not go in the trash with broken copy.

[deepak1556]

If someone is able to consistently repro this issue on their machine, can you help with running the following steps

1. We rely on sysctl.proc_translated call to confirm if the running process is translated to show the warning, I am unsure why it would show up for native arm64 builds. Can you compile the following simple cli utility https://gist.github.com/deepak1556/c2aacb9eef892c540c85a40cc46531f6 and get the output of getarch -p <pid>. Replace pid with the one corresponding to the code process

2. Get the output of ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=1 <path-to>/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron -e 'console.log(process.arch)'

[AAwaisYaseen]

Resolved it with these steps:

1. Go to Mac --> System Settings --> General --> Storage --> Applications.
2. Check "Kind" column for vscode and if it says "Intel", select and click on delete.
3. Go to "https://code.visualstudio.com/download" and download the "Apple silicon" version.

Your configuration settings and extensions won't be deleted as these are stored in user library folder.

Thanks @JustinClark319 and @vjpb

[AndriSig]

@AAwaisYaseen The apple silicon version refuses to let you use x64 instruction sets. Which some of us need to do for our projects.. It was working great last week, this is infuriating.

[ZeshanMubshir]

The same problem here even on my new Macbook Pro M4 Chip and macOS Sequoia v15.6.1.