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"useractivityd" constantly uses more and more CPU

All of a sudden the fan of my iMac got crazy. Then when looking in Activity Monitor I noticed that a Process called "useractivityd" uses up to 340% of my CPU. It goes up an down between 200 and 340. I have no clue what is going on and google couldn't help me.

Anyone know what's going on?

(iMac Mac (27-inch, Late 2013), 3.5 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3)


Thank you

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Jun 2, 2022 1:13 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 2, 2022 4:51 AM

The user ( you ) have hit on a possible series of Run Away Processing happening on this computer resulting in this native process to spike.


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 - Sometimes a Safe Boot followed by a Normal Boot will just put things right.


4 - 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.


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


6 - If after performing each of the above steps is the order that have been presents and still have issues - please advise for possible further assistance.


3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 2, 2022 4:51 AM in response to Prof.Farnsworth

The user ( you ) have hit on a possible series of Run Away Processing happening on this computer resulting in this native process to spike.


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 - Sometimes a Safe Boot followed by a Normal Boot will just put things right.


4 - 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.


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


6 - If after performing each of the above steps is the order that have been presents and still have issues - please advise for possible further assistance.


"useractivityd" constantly uses more and more CPU

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