com.apple.geod has second highest bandwidth usage in Activity Monitor, but Location Services are OFF

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com.apple.geod has second highest bandwidth usage in Activity Monitor, but Location Services are OFF

MacBook Pro 2012 running 10.15.7

We've had Activity Monitor running for a few days trying to track down a runaway process, and while that's not working the way we'd hoped, we have discovered that com.apple.geod has second highest bandwidth usage of any app Activity Monitor — which would be problematic enough by itself, but Location Services are OFF on this computer.

So any ideas why com.apple.geod would be receiving more data than almost any other app or service?

Posted on Aug 31, 2021 8:47 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

leroydouglas

Community+ 2024

Level 10

183,990 points

Sep 8, 2021 12:49 PM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

100 Watt Walrus wrote:

Hi Rob,

The issue has not reoccurred in the last few days, so rebooting in Safe Mode won't provide any clues.

All I'm looking for here is insight into com.apple.geod. If I know more about it, I can narrow down what happened when it ate up several GB of bandwidth — that's data up and down, not CPU — in just a couple hours.

As I understand it, com.apple.geod is related to location services, but that's all I know. I just want to understand more about com.apple.geod and what it does, so I can try to figure out what happened.

You can always run a sample of the process from the activity monitor.app if you click open the process>Sample

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

If it is not longer an issue as you indicate, I would see it as a temporary glitch.

There are many things that rely on com.apple.geod

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/allow-apps-to-detect-the-location-of-your-mac-mh35873/11.0/mac/11.0

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Answer 2

Rob_H1

Community Specialist

Sep 1, 2021 2:53 PM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

Hey there 100 Watt Walrus,

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. We understand that you notice a specific task is using a high CPU %. We're happy to provide some assistance.

Was anything updated or changed when this started occurring? Are there apps currently running? If so, close them to help isolate the issue. Make sure you save any work before doing so.

If the issue persists, see if this occurs in safe mode:

Start up your Mac in safe mode

Also, if your Mac us running slowly, this article can help:

If your Mac runs slowly

We hope this helps.

Have a great day!

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Answer 3

Sep 1, 2021 6:47 PM in response to Rob_H1

Nothing updated or changed. Running apps (at various times throughout the last few days):

Foreground: Safari (one or two tabs, max), Mail, Excel, Word, TeamViewer, Activity Monitor, Simplenote, TextEdit, Preview

Background: Dropbox, Magnet, TripMode, GetPlainText, Enpass (password manager), MalwareBytes (free version, so not actually doing anything, just hanging out in the Menu Bar, occasionally updating its database).

We could start up in Safe Mode, but I'm more interested in, as I said, some insight into what com.apple.geod could possibly be doing when Location Services are NOT turned on, seeing as that is a location-services process.

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Answer 4

Rob_H1

Community Specialist

Sep 5, 2021 9:40 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

Thank you for the reply 100 Watt Walrus!

We do recommend booting in safe mode to help isolate the issue. This will help determine if there is something associated to your user account, such as a login item causing this issue. Also, have you noticed if this appears when opening a specific app? Try closing all apps and monitor this to see if this occurs after re-opening the apps you use.

If the issue persists, please reach out to Apple directly here: Get Support

Cheers!

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Answer 5

Sep 5, 2021 8:26 PM in response to Rob_H1

Hi Rob,

The issue has not reoccurred in the last few days, so rebooting in Safe Mode won't provide any clues.

All I'm looking for here is insight into com.apple.geod. If I know more about it, I can narrow down what happened when it ate up several GB of bandwidth — that's data up and down, not CPU — in just a couple hours.

As I understand it, com.apple.geod is related to location services, but that's all I know. I just want to understand more about com.apple.geod and what it does, so I can try to figure out what happened.

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Answer 6

Sep 8, 2021 12:20 PM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

I logged in and half of my computers bandwidth is taken up by apple processes sending my metadata back to apple like the one listed above.

Turns out that CSAM invasion of privacy is probably going to be used to openly spy on everyone.

Time to move to linux TBFH

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Answer 7

Sep 9, 2021 3:42 PM in response to leroydouglas

Thanks for trying to actually help, leroydouglas. I guess we'll never know what happened. It's pretty frustrating for a "temporary glitch" to eat up 1.6GB of our 10GB/mo metered bandwidth in a matter of hours, when the service that "glitch" occurred in (Location Services) has never once been turned on for this computer.

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com.apple.geod has second highest bandwidth usage in Activity Monitor, but Location Services are OFF

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