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atsd process in Activity Monitor? What is it?

iMac 27" with 16 GB Ram, Intel Core i7, MacOS 10.14 is very slow. On restart noticed on Activity Monitor that the atsd process is using 100% CPU and now can't launch any programs. Tried resetting PRAM and SMC with no difference. What is the atsd process anyway?


JHog1978 asked this question on July 16, 2019 at 4:37 PM and never got an answer.


Anyone know?

Posted on Feb 28, 2020 8:22 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 28, 2020 9:41 AM

Thank you, this was very useful knowing this was a font issue. Even though the Restore Standard Fonts didn't work through Font Book I was able to clear the cache with the following terminal commands and restart my computer:


sudo atsutil databases -remove

Then run

atsutil server -shutdown

atsutil server -ping

5 replies

Feb 28, 2020 8:39 AM in response to 25yrMacuser

It's part of the OS's font management system. Specifically, a function within ATS.framework at this location:


/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/ATS.framework/Support/atsd


That it won't release suggests possible corrupt fonts, a corrupt Font Book database, both, or other related issue.


For something simple to try, open Font Book and run the menu command, Restore Standard Fonts, then restart the Mac.

atsd process in Activity Monitor? What is it?

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