74% less memory

LinkLite 0.2.0 vs DisplayLink Manager 16.1.25, tested with two 4K displays.

Download for macOS v0.3.17 Inspect the method

134 MB: Mean memory · Manager: 513 MB
15%: Whole GPU under motion · Manager: 33%
338% CPU: CPU under motion · Manager: 20%

Measured 3 November 2026LinkLite 0.2.0 pre-releaseDisplayLink Manager 16.1.25macOS 26.6 · Apple M5 Pro · two 4K60 displays

Runtime measurements

Driver memory

3.8× less memory than DisplayLink Manager

Mean across desktop + animation

Lower is better

LinkLite 0.2.0
DisplayLink Manager 16.1.25

LinkLite134 MB

DisplayLink Manager513 MB

Live desktop133 MB vs 512 MB

60 fps animation135 MB vs 513 MB

LinkLite values are means of lite1 and lite2 across the 45-second desktop and animation phases.

Whole-GPU use during motion

54% lower whole-GPU use under motion

Whole-GPU busy · 60 fps animation

Lower is better

LinkLite 0.2.0
DisplayLink Manager 16.1.25

LinkLite15%

DisplayLink Manager33%

Whole-GPU figures include other applications. Unrounded averages: 15.2308% and 32.9556%.

Driver and WindowServer GPU time · animation

Lower is better

Driver process
WindowServer

LinkLite total250 ms/s = 0 + 250

DisplayLink Manager total323 ms/s = 168 + 155

Shared scale: 323 ms/s fills the track. “ms/s” is GPU milliseconds per second. WindowServer includes work from every app.

Capture-path comparison · 3 November 2026 · LinkLite 0.2.0 · real hardware: one extra 4K-display capture cost WindowServer about 25 ms/s of GPU with ScreenCaptureKit and about 17 ms/s with the older CGDisplayStream. CGDisplayStream is obsoleted in the macOS 15 SDK; LinkLite uses ScreenCaptureKit.

CPU during animation

Measured CPU cost

338% LinkLite CPU; 100% represents one core

Driver CPU · 60 fps animation

Lower is better

LinkLite338%

DisplayLink Manager20%

Live desktop · LinkLite55% ≈ half a core

Live desktop · Manager2%

LinkLite encodes on the CPU; DisplayLink Manager uses the GPU. LinkLite animation runs measured 336% and 339%.

App bundle size

5.3× smaller: LinkLite 0.3.0 versus Manager

The measured LinkLite 0.2.0 app was 2.6 MB. No v0.3.17 app-size measurement is recorded.

LinkLite 0.3.0 vs DisplayLink Manager 16.1.25

Lower is better

LinkLite 0.3.0
DisplayLink Manager 16.1.25

LinkLite3.9 MB

DisplayLink Manager20.6 MB

LinkLite 0.3.0: 3.9 MB. DisplayLink Manager 16.1.25: 20.6 MB. Bundle size is separate from runtime memory.

Raw results

Per-run results from 3 November 2026. GPU time is milliseconds of GPU per second; CPU and whole-GPU busy are percentages.
Run	Phase	Whole GPU	Driver GPU	WindowServer	Driver CPU	Memory
lite1	desktop	3.8%	0 ms/s	123 ms/s	53%	136 MB
lite1	animation	9.7%	0 ms/s	216 ms/s	336%	135 MB
dlm	desktop	2.4%	9 ms/s	67 ms/s	2%	512 MB
dlm	animation	33.0%	168 ms/s	155 ms/s	20%	513 MB
lite2	desktop	19.8%	0 ms/s	200 ms/s	58%	131 MB
lite2	animation	20.9%	0 ms/s	285 ms/s	339%	134 MB

Raw samples CSV Summary JSON Run log

Test setup

Hardware

Mac: MacBook Pro, Apple M5 Pro, 64 GB, macOS 26.6
Dock: Humanscale M/Connect 2, DL-6xxx “Ridge” (USB 17e9:600f) on a 5 Gbps USB link, checked with swift run dlprobe
Displays: Two HP Z27k G3 monitors, 3840×2160 at 60 Hz, both “looks like” 1920×1080 HiDPI
Render check: Both drivers rendered each monitor at 1920×1080 points, 2× (3840×2160 pixels)

A/B/A sequence

A · 01LinkLite
lite1
B · 02DisplayLink Manager
dlm
A · 03LinkLite again
lite2

settle
15 secondsNothing; lets the displays come up and the driver reach steady state. Not scored.
desktop
45 secondsThe live desktop as it is: menu-bar clock and idle windows.
animation
45 secondsA deterministic 60 fps canvas animation—scrolling gradient, drifting cards, frame counter—in a 1600×900 Chrome window on the right-most external screen. Chrome uses an isolated temporary profile.

Sampling method

One sample per second

The sampler follows LinkLite, or DisplayLinkUserAgent and DisplayLinkXpcService, plus WindowServer for either driver. WindowServer is included because compositor work also consumes resources.

Per-process GPU time: AGX per-client AppUsage › accumulatedGPUTime counters from ioreg -r -c AGXDeviceUserClient, summed per process and differenced between samples. This is the counter behind Activity Monitor’s GPU column.
Whole-GPU utilisation: Device Utilization % in IOAccelerator performance statistics from ioreg -r -c IOAccelerator.
CPU, memory, energy impact: /usr/bin/top -l 0 -s 1 -stats command,cpu,mem,power.
Summary rule: The summary averages lite1 and lite2, and scores only desktop and animation. It is not a memory-trend detector.

Limitations

Eight-hour memory soak: not recorded

No eight-hour memory soak is recorded. These A/B/A runs cannot establish bounded memory.
top memory is not an allocation or leak trace. Missing GPU counters do not prove zero GPU work; whole-GPU and WindowServer figures include other applications.
High LinkLite CPU is measured. The criterion for materially lower CPU than Manager remains unresolved; memory savings do not satisfy it.
Handoffs require supervision. An outgoing driver left alive or a missing screen invalidates the comparison.

Component tests

4 November 2026 · LinkLite v0.3.7 · Hardware-free

Hidden panel CPU

~~9.54%~~0.18%

Process CPU over six seconds after dismissing the searching panel in a native test host. No attached-display workload.

Frame packing

~~204.1 ms~~119.2 ms

Time to pack 50 identical cached 3840×2160 Ridge frames in an optimized Rust build. Avoids 16,200 strip-body allocations and 41,988,360 copied body bytes per synthetic full frame; not retained memory or frame rate.

Download LinkLite v0.3.17

Apple silicon · macOS 14 or later · open-source beta. Quit DisplayLink Manager before opening LinkLite.

Download for macOS v0.3.17 Back to the LinkLite homepage