what does process TRIALD do — and why so many files in Users/user/library?

Thanks for the additional data point.

The presentation was seemingly random here too. After a reboot it would take about a day to present, and triald would just be pegging one CPU core at 100% for hours on end once it presented. Inspecting it with:

log stream --level info --predicate 'process == "triald"'

Showed it just looping through the same thing over and over. Looking at file opens and such with:

sudo fs_usage

Showed it touching Siri-related things in ~/Library/Trial. While triald was in this state, I enabled Siri, and the issue went away. It hasn't occurred since.

Prior to enabling Siri, I had played around with deleting ~/Library/Trial, setting it to 000 permissions, and even symlinking it to /dev/null, but the first only worked for a period of time, and the latter two options seemed way too dirty of a hack. Likewise it doesn't seem possible to unload the LaunchAgent unless you disable SIP, which I don't want to do.

Those who have noticed excessive CPU usage from triald that doesn't seem to go away on macOS 12.3, do you have Siri disabled? Poking around ~/Library/Trial it seems largely Siri-related, and I've only seen this behavior on Macs that have Siri disabled.

I enabled Siri on an affected Mac, and the behavior seems to have gone away, but it's probably too soon to tell.

I have followed all the conversations here about ~/Library/Trial files that cannot be suppressed and have tried safe boot, launchctl, deleting the plist, etc. Finally I stumbled upon a solution that has at least for the last 2 days prevented the writing of the hundreds of thousands and hundreds of megabytes of data.

1. empty ~/Library/Trial
2. remove all access permissions from it as root
3. (optional step) curse Apple for experimenting with my machine

Yeah triald appears to do A/B stuff with Siri. The test case I'm looking for is someone who is affected by the excess triald CPU issue, whether they have Siri disabled, and whether enabling it appears to resolve the issue. I don't expect the inverse test case to immediately produce the issue, since triald is not constantly running A/B tests.

Based on the behavior on this Mac here, I suspect triald tries to run A/B tests against Siri data even it's disabled, fails because it's disabled, and constantly loops through that, producing high CPU usage.

1 - Suggest restarting in Safe Mode. This will perform a Disk Repair, clear cache files and only load Apple Software, extensions and fonts. The boot up will be slow and can take some time - Normal.

2 - Does the issue present in this mode ?

3 - If not - there could be something in the main User Account playing up. To further isolate this - Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac. Then log out of the Main User account and log into the dummy account and test again if the issue persists.

4 - If the issue is present in the dummy account - then, this appears to be a System Wide issue on the computer.

5 - Suggest downloading the Application Etrecheck directly from a well Respected ASC Contributor. And Safe to use.

The application is free or paid from added features. 

Run the application with Full Disc Access ( Security & Privacy - Full Disc Access ).

It will take a Snap Shot -  both the hardware and software. And we can really see what is happening on this computer.

 The Report will Not Reveal Any Personal Information. 

Post back the Full Report - copy and paste - using the Additional Text Icon ( 3rd Icon to last )

We can have a look at the report for possible issues and may have possible suggestions to resolve the issues.

Any Third Party Applications that will interfere with the normal operation of the OS, alter, modify, remove or delete or attempt to do so is an invitation for disaster and may require a Reinstallation of the OS in-order to replace any modified, altered, removed or corrupted elements of the OS this software has inflected on this computer 

Any of the below should be removed as per Developers Instructions 

This includes AntiVirus, Disk Cleaners, Disk Optimizes, UnInstaller etc.

This will include CleanMyMac , This will include BitDefender , 

This will included Norton Antivirus , Sophos Av Software

Intego AntiVirus, McAfee, MacKeeper, Avast AntiVirus

Ad Guard, Webroot

The The Built in Security  is all that is required.

Setting 000 permissions on ~/Library/Trial will indeed work, but I'm not sure it's advisable, and it also causes logd to elevate its CPU usage due to triald constantly failing to write to its data directory.

I have had good luck with enabling Siri and then deleting Siri history via System Preferences. It does not cut down on the disk space usage in ~/Library/Trial but it does seem to mitigate triald from pegging the CPU.

There was also a recent overview of triald here that is quite good:

https://eclecticlight.co/2022/03/31/what-is-triald-and-why-is-it-taking-so-much-disk-space/

But it really doesn't add much additional information to what we already know.

I did find a suggestion that it may have something to do with Siri and they did the following:

Go into Siri preferences and delete the Siri dictation and search history

bradleyfrommaine wrote:

Actually natenate is more in focus on this, Siri and some A/B algorithm, perhaps. We're still not at the bottom of it. The process triald is building a huge database complex from what is on my disk. Hence, my question. And no, "communicates with a lot of processes" does not answer the question. Just like "communicates with a lot of people" does not answer the question, what is Alex Jones up to?

I would suggest to look through some preferences—and try turning off/disabling some options and see if there is any impact here

>System Preferences>Security&Privacy>Privacy

Go down the list:

Share analytics information from your Mac with Apple - Apple Support

Have you talked to Apple Support about your ongoing issue:

Get Support

bradleyfrommaine wrote:

I've not been able to find any info on this daemon process. On my 2019 MacBook Pro with Monterey 12.3, triald pegs in with the eighth highest overall CPU usage. And then there's the files. In my user library, the folder "trial" contains over 173 THOUSAND files/items. And because of disk allocation, the 62 MB of these data take up 666.7 MB of disk space.

I've killed the process and moved the trial folder to the trash. The daemon starts right back up, or no later than a reboot, and the re-initialized folder starts out with about 2 MB of disk space allocated. But after a couple of days, it's right back to over 172,000 files/items and varies a bit from there.

A second, utility, user on this machine with an overall total of about 76 MB of files has a much smaller trial folder in its user library with about 4 MB of data for 138 items.

So. Does anyone know the purpose/function of this daemon? Thanks.

And what issue are you having independent of this file count and folder size in your user account—

what makes you drill down here on triald as an issue?

You can try a Safeboot, then reboot as normal

SafeBoot https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

you can try re-installing the macOS on top of your existing macOS to sort anomalies

How to reinstall macOS

Recovery (both M1 and Intel) — https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

I just noticed in iStat Menus that 25% of overall CPU cores is taken by triald on my MBP 14 M1 Pro. I noticed as it got red all the way at the menu bar icon. And it is more than 20 mins and it does not go away. I think it is related to upgrade to 12.3. So, it takes CPU and power for no apparent reason, looks like some kind of bug. There was no such nonsense process in the past.

If the issue is " reproducible " , there really is not need to canvass for addition input from others.

Just go ahead and submit the Bug Report via appropriate channel Product Feedback - Apple

Refer to earlier posting in this question by @leroydouglas