New PixInsight 1.9.4: overall ~30% faster on Apple Silicon

Such a shame we have to put up with these issues. Wish I hadn’t “upgraded” to 1.9.4 as it’s been nothing but problems and irritation, especially when some of the Pixinsight software people over at the Pixinsight Forum seem so cavalier about the problems this update has caused. I’m quite disappointed….

Rostokko · May 25, 2026 at 10:00 PM

(which boosts wbpp performance *significantly&, at least for me).

Same here, process time divided by 2 approximately. Up to the point that I don’t bother to use the fast integration option any longer…

Though now all processes and scripts I use for linear processing, stretching, Narrowband-processing are available vor 1.9.4 ARM, I reverted to 1.9.4 x86 …
… because I noticed that many (most?) of the image analysis tools are not available for v8 engine:

SubframeSelector, AberrationInspector, FWHMEccentricity - all I use regularly.

Best regards.
Michael

PS: Someone ported today FWHMEccentricity - but I rather would like to have the native PI scripts.

Rostokko · May 26, 2026 at 09:55 PM

Michael · May 26, 2026, 08:43 PM

SubframeSelector, AberrationInspector, FWHMEccentricity - all I use regularly.

SubframeSelector is there - it’s a process.

But - it’s not working in 1.9.4 ARM. Known bug - partially crashing PI, partially the result window is not shown. “Cannot reproduce” 🤣

Michael · May 26, 2026, 09:58 PM

it’s not working in 1.9.4 ARM

Strange, it seems to work fine for me; but I’m likely not stressing it as you do.

Steve Heath · May 27, 2026, 12:17 AM

pfile · May 26, 2026, 10:03 PM

Steve Heath · May 25, 2026, 09:49 PM

Such a shame we have to put up with these issues. Wish I hadn’t “upgraded” to 1.9.4 as it’s been nothing but problems and irritation, especially when some of the Pixinsight software people over at the Pixinsight Forum seem so cavalier about the problems this update has caused. I’m quite disappointed….

you can switch to the x86-64 version of 1.9.4 which still has the old javascript interpreter.

Yes I’ve heard that and I may just do that. Reverting back to 1.9.3 was a failure as WBPP failed to work. Tried loading the Terminal fix suggested by Juan (from Pixinsight Forum) but didn’t work and WBPP simply was DOA. I’m now back on 1.9.4 (build 1693) and trying to cope with other oddities that have popped up like, (I’m using a MBP M4Max) when scrolling the courser over an open image and getting an unwanted zooming in. Plus, I’m getting strange intermittent STF behavior where it seems to change the image to a state somewhere between linear and screen transfer stretch and can’t go back to a linear state. I’m sure these issues would be classified as “not a bug”, and I’m no software engineer….

i’m not really sure why this 1.9.3 problem with WBPP happens even if people delete all the settings files/cache files. really confusing.

unfortunately juan tests on computers that have a fresh OS install and only pixinsight installed. this is convenient for him but clearly not representative of a normal operating environment. i’m sure if he ran PI like the rest of us did he would find bugs and fix them, even if they are not directly caused by his code or Qt. but there’s nothing we can do about that other than to find workarounds and share them amongst ourselves.

Steve Heath · May 28, 2026, 04:03 PM

A new issue popped up today with 1.9.4, can’t seem to update the repository because of it. 📷 Screenshot 2026-05-28 at 8.45.25 AM.png I tried removing the repository script for ASIAirCleaner (https://pixinsight.ganotechnologies.com/) and tried again but still got the Error message above. Not sure what’s happening.

Any ideas as how to fix this one?

I’m using a MBP with M4 Max running Tahoe 26.5

Thanks.

is that dialog coming when PI is trying to update, or when updates are being downloaded?

sometimes the updater fails to delete files because it has somehow lost it’s “suid” bit which allows it to become the root user while running, which in turn allows it to delete most any file in the filesystem.

or you can try going to that folder and deleting that file and see if you can get past it.

ok so i guess it’s the PI application itself that can’t delete the file. you can try opening that folder in the finder and see if you can delete the file(s) yourself… if you copy everything from /var to ..Cleaner/ (highlight the path, right click, select copy) then in the Terminal application say “open “ (no quotes, but put a space after open) and paste the path, you should get a finder window there. then you can try trashing that file that PI can’t delete and see what happens when you empty the trash.

chances are though when you try to check for updates again it will die on a different file, so you might have to keep deleting stuff on PI’s behalf.

this is a new one; the PI application should be able to delete those files, since it also created then. not sure at all what’s going on here but it’s par for the course with PI.

pfile · May 28, 2026, 07:19 PM

ok so i guess it’s the PI application itself that can’t delete the file. you can try opening that folder in the finder and see if you can delete the file(s) yourself… if you copy everything from /var to ..Cleaner/ (highlight the path, right click, select copy) then in the Terminal application say “open “ (no quotes, but put a space after open) and paste the path, you should get a finder window there. then you can try trashing that file that PI can’t delete and see what happens when you empty the trash.

chances are though when you try to check for updates again it will die on a different file, so you might have to keep deleting stuff on PI’s behalf.

this is a new one; the PI application should be able to delete those files, since it also created then. not sure at all what’s going on here but it’s par for the course with PI.

Well, I tried doing what you suggested in Terminal and it came back with no such file exists. If only I could go back in time and not upgrade to 1.9.4 Nothing but new problems everyday. Until going to 1.9.4, my Pixinsight experience was awesome. I applied for a Pixinsight Forum account last week but I’m still waiting for my “approval”. Doesn’t matter, I’m guessing the response to this issue would be much the same as I see with others, “not a bug”….

Steve Heath · May 28, 2026, 09:06 PM

pfile · May 28, 2026, 07:19 PM

ok so i guess it’s the PI application itself that can’t delete the file. you can try opening that folder in the finder and see if you can delete the file(s) yourself… if you copy everything from /var to ..Cleaner/ (highlight the path, right click, select copy) then in the Terminal application say “open “ (no quotes, but put a space after open) and paste the path, you should get a finder window there. then you can try trashing that file that PI can’t delete and see what happens when you empty the trash.

chances are though when you try to check for updates again it will die on a different file, so you might have to keep deleting stuff on PI’s behalf.

this is a new one; the PI application should be able to delete those files, since it also created then. not sure at all what’s going on here but it’s par for the course with PI.

Well, I tried doing what you suggested in Terminal and it came back with no such file exists. If only I could go back in time and not upgrade to 1.9.4 Nothing but new problems everyday. Until going to 1.9.4, my Pixinsight experience was awesome. I applied for a Pixinsight Forum account last week but I’m still waiting for my “approval”. Doesn’t matter, I’m guessing the response to this issue would be much the same as I see with others, “not a bug”….

yeah you probably won’t get support for this. the reasoning goes that juan would never release a piece of software with this bug, and it didn’t happen on his computers, therefore it’s something specific to your computer which you need to figure out.

which 1.9.4 are you using? arm64 or x64? just out of curiosity.

i guess there’s a chance deleting the PI application and reinstalling will resolve this problem. your settings file is not affected by deleting PI and reinstalling, but if you want to be safe, you can go to the manage repository dialog and click save, then give any filename you want in any directory but the /Applications/PixInsight directory and save your repositories.

that way if somehow your settings file does get corrupted or erased you can restore your repositories by loading them from the file you saved.

I’m using 1.9.4 (1693) arm64 for Apple Silicon.