DFRHUD and TouchBarServer high CPU when idle

I have had a problem with DFRHUD hogging up to 30% cpu and 10GB of ram along with a bugged Touch Bar and couldn't solve it. I unselected "enable Touch Bar zoom" in accessibility per your answer and it vanished! Thanks.

I found through Google search that DFRHUD is associated with the Accessibility menu in System Preferences. I unchecked absolutely every box in SP/Accessibility and it went from using 5 GB of memory to not showing up at all in the Monitor Memory list. I may find out I've changed a function of my MacBook I was using, but at least I know how to make it go away. Thankful it doesn't seem to be malicious.

Catalina 10.15.5

Joyce

Today is the second non-consecutive day I have seen this problem. I just unchecked "enable Touch Bar zoom" on mine and it's already cooling down. THANKS!!!!

I will try to use a different user and if the problem persists I will reinstall Catalina with a Clean Install

Me too. I experienced this behavior since I bought my mbpro and updated to Catalina. I will try to use your script and see what is happening to my cpu. By now i use this command:

to show battery temperature and when i unlock the pc i see 50/60 C, when I'm using it the temperature is around 35 C

Go to System Preferences. Open Accessibility. Click Zoom in the left menu. Uncheck Enable Touch Bar Zoom in the right window. That fixed the problem for some of us. Credit to himynameis for zeroing in on the fix. Don't know the reason.

Mike Hitt wrote:

Another post suggested that software developer' Etresoft' provided this process to Apple see my pasted note to Etresoft:

To clarify, all I did was search for DRFHUD and found it referenced here in the forums. Luckily, someone had found a solution and posted it here for other people, like me, to find.

When you see these kinds of things, please follow up and let people know if the fix worked for you. You did that, so thanks!

It would also be really helpful if you could send Feedback directly to Apple about such problems. Your suggestion that Apple support pay closer attention to these forums is also a good idea. Too often, official Apple support channels will only refer to Apple's own support documents. When we agree to Apple's Terms of Service for participation in the forums, we give Apple rights to use our submissions. They should do that.

did you find a solution to this problem?

I don’t know about DFRHUD, but for me, TouchBarServer and routined spike all throughout the day, not just while my Mac is idle.

Solved my problem too, thanks.

Thanks matheadinc,

I'm glad that worked for you. It seems even small changes to accessibility or Touch Bar make the demon go away. I hope Apple is working on a better solution.

I'm sorry that the easy solution is not possible for you, yet that may not be the case. Try activating a couple of the Accessibility features, restart and then uncheck them. Toggling has worked for several of us.

Another post suggested that software developer' Etresoft' provided this process to Apple see my pasted note to Etresoft:

Hi,

DRFHUD process is requiring a tremendous amount of memory, up to 2.1GB earlier this afternoon. Apple support communities suggested that I contact you to solve this problem. Responses to my post stated that the process should be using 50 MB+/-. The memory hogging only occurs when I’m logged in as the user. It does not happen when I login as administrator, nor does it occur in safe mode. Apple customer service advised me that they had no solution. They suggested that I send the computer to them to repair. No Apple tech was able to replicate the problem. They returned my computer as no issues detected, and they did not perform any repair. As soon as I logged in as user the process started gradually requiring more and progressively more memory. It went from 51 MB at login but as I followed it via Activity Monitor it slowly needed more and more energy. Within an hour it slowly climbed to to 2+GB.

Nothing has changed despite running Disk Repair repeatedly, Techtool Pro and other tools didn’t find anything wrong and did not repair anything. I’m quite hopeful that you can guide me to a solution to stop this runaway process. I thank you, in advance for any help that you may offer,

I’m running OS.1O.15.5 and the rest of my stats are on the attached screenshot. Thank you. I’ve also attached a screenshot of “Activity Monitor” which for some reason is not showing the amount of memory each process is requiring. It does show that the process is using the third most memory of all.

jmlow,

Thanks for sharing that neat little trick. I'm disappointed in Apple. Two customer service "Apple Care" agents had no idea what the problem was being caused by, a third rep. put me on hold, consulted an engineer and told me that the process had something to do with the Touch Bar. Apparently Apple's been having problems with Touch Bars heating up. They were sure that my problem was connected to a hot Touch Bar . Fortunately Apple Service emailed me, with my computer on their bench. They told me that my Touch Bar was fine which allowed me an opportunity to explain that the Touch Bar was never a concern of mine, but that it was the runaway process that was my computer's issue. It appears that nowhere in the Apple database is a description or a fix for this runaway process. You were able to figure it out but Apple was not. They spent a week with my computer trying to find something to repair and ultimately found nothing. I asked them to please run my laptop with me as the user and they would definitely see the problem. I heard nothing back from them and a few days later my computer was delivered back to me. Apple techs are good but they need to learn how to access their own community database. By the way, I was fortunate not to have to use your generously offered fix, because after erasing my hard drive, installing 10.5.5 and then clean installing app by app, file by file, I found that I still had the problem. Someone had suggested just toggling 'accessibility'. I did that and it's now 3 days later and I cannot even find DFRHUD even mentioned by Activity Monitor. I wonder how many customers have the problem but don't know they do? Apple needs to recognize this glitch and the various fixes for it. They will, as they always have done, (for the past 40 years that I've been using no computer, if not an Apple computer). Although I feel like I have spent about that much time on this one 'little' problem. Thanks for tossing me a life line.