Window is constantly repainted, resulting in high system utilization

[hulthe]

Describe the bug
Window is almost constantly being repainted when displaying the Home view or when showing a Space.
This results in high CPU and GPU usage, and a poor longevity for battery-powered devices.

The repainting seems to be less aggressive (but is still highly noticeable) when a chat is open.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Install commet & log in.
2. Ensure you have joined at least 1 room.
3. Have the "Home" view open.
4. Observe that the window is constantly being repainted. This can be done in a few ways.
   • Check system monitor and observe consistently high CPU/GPU usage.
   • Use a window manager that tells you when a window is being repainted.
     • On niri, i can enable debug-toggle-damage to see when Commet is being repainted.

Expected behavior
The window should only repaint when something has changed.
Ideally, it should only repaint the individual widgets that have changed, not the entire window.
I don't know much about flutter, but perhaps this blog post can be useful: https://medium.com/@rk0936626/improve-app-performance-by-reducing-unnecessary-redraws-of-widgets-in-flutter-412c09ff26b5

Screenshots
Here is one state where commet is constantly being repainted:

Sadly, Niri doesn't let me screen-record the debug-toggle-damage effect.

Additional context
A notable exception is that the window is repainted much less often when the settings view is opened.

The repaints doesn't seem to be triggered by room updates. I reproduced this with a brand-new account, and was able to observe the constant repainting after creating a new room.

Device Information

Device
Platform: linux
Version: v0.4.2
Git Hash: 2304e82f134bc92de82f22f927b9f7885467ee5b
Detail: flatpak
Build Timestamp: 1777087211085 (April 25, 2026)

System Info
Name: GNOME
Version: 48 (Flatpak runtime)

Display Server: wayland
Desktop Environment: wayland

[Airyzz]

I suspect the view you are getting from your window manager is a little misleading. the Flutter dev tools provide a mode to highlight widget redraws, which confirm commet is only redrawing widgets on changes. This may be a quirk of how Flutter internally draws the final rendered result to the window, this is just a guess though as i'm not really familiar with how that is handled by the flutter engine.

[hulthe]

The real issue is the high cpu usage. It drains my battery and makes commet unusable for me. Its possible that the window damage is unrelated or misleading, but it seems a likely cause.

If i find the time i will try to figure out how to build and run commet in dev/profile mode to get more details about my issue.

Btw, thanks for your time :)

[Skabunkel]

I get the same issue, if i write in a chat it "fixes" it self.

[hulthe]

Maybe related: flutter/flutter#101591