"bird' process in Activity Monitor - What is it? Can I safely delete it?

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Level 1

11 points

"bird' process in Activity Monitor - What is it? Can I safely delete it?

There is a process running on my MBP called 'bird'. It's taking up almost all of my CPU usage. I do not know what it is. I would like to know what it is and if I can safely delete it.

I haven't be able to find any reference to that MAC OS process in any of my searches and would appreciate if anyone could reply with a link to explain this process.

Thanks,

MacBook Pro 15", 10.13

Posted on Feb 18, 2019 2:05 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

238,685 points

Feb 18, 2019 2:11 PM in response to chuckput

It's used for iCloud Drive...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6606275

I wanted to upload an ubuntu-16.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso file, and as soon as I threw it away and didn't upload it on iCloud, bird went alright. The guy I had told me that I shouldn't try to upload any OS on iCloud, and it's written on the User's conditions... He told me that only simple and typical files (pictures, videos, .number or .xlsx, .pages, .psd, .zip) should be updated...

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/222859/icloud-drive-bird-service-always-running

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Answer 2

Kappy

Level 10

361,709 points

Feb 18, 2019 2:15 PM in response to chuckput

No, you can't delete it. It is an essential part of macOS. The content of macOS is proprietary. It isn't likely you will find anything unless it's part of the open-source Unix components. What little I know is that it's a system daemon used with iCloud and iCloud Drive.

If the daemon is using a large amount of CPU time then you may have something running that is causing the bird process to crash. You can sometimes use Activity Monitor to kill the process, thus forcing it to re-launch. That may fix things but not always.

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