ChromeOS users are reporting that a new series of updates which cause a Google Play Store service to utilize 100 percent of their CPUs is making their devices hot and leading to performance issues.
As reported by BleepingComputer, after upgrading their devices to ChromeOS version 85.0.4183.108 and later users have faced a number of issues including apps that are running erratically, devices getting hot, fans running at high speed and batteries draining much too quickly.
Upon investigating these issues further, users discovered that they were caused by the Google Play ‘com.android.vending:download_service’ utilizing 95 to 100 percent of their devices CPU for an extended period.
This service is used to download new updates from the Google Play Store when they become available. However, a bug in the service causes the CPU to run at 100 percent power all of the time even when a new update is not available.
ChromeOS update issues
The bug found in the Google Play store service does not affect all Chromebooks though users of Acer Chromebooks, the ASUS Chromebook Flip and Galaxy Chromebooks have reported experiencing problems after updating their devices.
Users have come up with their own ways to resolve this issue from killing the com.android.vending:download_service process in the Chrome Task Manager to rolling back to an older Google Play Store version.
Google is now aware of this issue and one of the company’s engineer explained in a bug report that it is being caused by missing files in ChromeOS.
The issue will likely be patched in an upcoming update but for now, users can try disabling the service process in the Chrome Task Manager though this hasn’t worked for all users or rolling back to an older version of the Play Store.