Accountsd Mac cpu is high

I had this problem too. Notice that your CPU Time is 33:28,97 for that process. Assuming that you made the update in that time interval, it seems that the accountsd process didn't restart itself when the update was made.

I was able to fix this by simply logging out of my current account, which made the accountsd process to restart.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Many thanks. This tip resolved the issue, albeit with a 40 minute wait while the new OS loaded. Apple today has become like Microsoft in the 90's. Every new "upgrade" involves headaches for the user community and hours of trouble shooting.

I just updated to Catalina last month. Everything was running smooth and fine under 10.15.6.

I did the 10.15.7 update yesterday first through the normal way --> system preferences - Software update and then the trouble with the accountsd-proces has also begun. There was nothing that worked from all the suggestions above, except for installing the combo update from 10.15.7. C'mon Apple!! Why does this online combo update apparently have an extra fix/feature that resolves this issue?? Why don't you simply release this update for E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E through the normal way, djeezes!

Anyway, my sincere thanks to cavemees for bringing up this solution/workaround which...doesn't make sense but what the heck, it works :-)

Remove any Exchange accounts from Mail solution worked for me :)

https://appletoolbox.com/what-is-accountsd-and-what-does-it-have-to-do-with-the-mail-app-on-macos-catalina/#Remove_any_Exchange_accounts_from_Mail

I am sad to report that 10.15.7 seems to have introduced the problem for me as well. It’s virtually impossible to switch of iCloud Keychain given that the CPU is at 500%, knowing that this checkbox is already in normal CPU state pretty unresponsive.

Sorry, originally messed with multiple threads. Safe Mode did not help. In panic (as I desperately need to work) I tried multiple things simultaneously and either repairing disk permissions or switching off iCloud Keychain (needs patience) worked.

we all tried so many things.

the only thing that worked for me was to quit all ! Processes with over 10% CPU Usage except backupd if you run timemachine.

all those processes has a ending with a d

after quit all those, shut down your login session by quit process „WindowServer“

after that, you have to login again and the fan slows down after1-2minutes

That worked for me ! Thanks :-)

The trigger for the problem was Outlook for Mac and I could not even kill the process (accountsd) in command line, as explained by others.

Note: oddly enough I get plenty of Certificate alerts in Safari (with Avast plugin) when I try to download the Combo update, accepting these did not help, so I used Firefox to download it.

Thx @Remogade, but that does not work for me.

After Apple-ID log out, I followed your instructions, killed all the *d processes over activity monitor incl. commerce and after that, "WindowServer".

After relogin, accountsd back on between 400 & 500

I'm using a mbpro 2015 with the latest update 10.15.7.

Didn't solve it until I logged out of my Apple ID account, rebooted and then logged in again. When logging in i saw a 150% usage of CPU only for 20 seconds, then dropped and never went up again.

Logging out of my Apple-ID and rebooting solved the issue (temporarily from me).

AccountSD still using too much CPU (60%, better than 700% though) but it's workable now.

Also run a system diagnostic test under activity monitor.

On Catalina 10.15.6 this has been causing HUGE pain as the computer becomes unresponsive even to keyboard or trackpad.

The root cause in my case seems to be a Ms Exchange account with Office365 that due company policies has to renew its password periodically. It´s incredible this issue is still not being fixed for over a year, in my case cpu goes 100% on all cores and eats the 32GB of RAM as soon as I boot the mac. My only fix was to use another computer to renew the password

Being a developer I figured it out, but for an average user this is total lock.

Apple seems more interested on making money selling more gadgets than fixing bugs on daily bread and butter features.

I signed off from the AppleID and back in. After entering my password a hundred times for KeyChain I still don't have KeyChain working again. The accountsd process is also still using all of my CPU.

macOS is getting worse year after year.

Wonderful! Now I can't login to my appleID because if I do get up-to 700% of cpu usage. Catalina 10.5.6

PS:

Already tried everything suggested in this thread, this seems like a server-side iCloud related bug.

.. after trying out a lot of recommendations like deleting Keychain and several folders, only signing out from iCloud and resetting the NVRAM (did it twice) on my late 2015 Retina 5K iMac solved the problem on this device.

Seems like not every system behaves the same way? Anyhow - I'd rather wait to install 10.15.7 if using it with iCloud, maybe / hopefully there will be a fix for this issue.