contactsd causing high CPU and memory usage

After a day of (frustrating) troubleshooting it seems that the issue, for me at least, is the interaction between gmail 'contact' lists and my mac. For my multiple gmail accounts, if I turn 'on' (in apple settings for the gmail internet accounts) the 'contacts' for these accounts then contactsd goes through the roof. If I turn these contact lists off (and I log back into my Apple ID and turn all iCloud functionality back on, include contacts) I seem to have no issues. (As a side note, once these gmail contacts have been removed from my address book, there are only 20% of the contacts on my Mac iCloud contact list then on my iPhone, in both case not considering gmail contacts etc. I am hoping they repopulate and that is just a function of all the off and on troubleshooting I did today).

mikettttt wrote:

Hey community,

since I've upgraded to Ventura the contactsd process utilises about 300% CPU and nearly 400GB virtual memory, blocking my Air M2 to work properly. I've tried to find similar threads, but was not successful.

Any suggestions how to get to the bottom of the problem?

Cheers,

Mike

Have you shutdown and restarted more than once since your upgrade...(?)

Try a SafeBoot How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies. Login and test, reboot as normal and compare your results.

No insight or resolve— Sign out of >System Settings>AppleID >iCloud and sign back in again to jump start/sort sync issues

Sign in and use iCloud.com - Apple Support

Sign in and use iCloud.com - Apple Support

I have installed Ventura in my Mac Mini 2012 with opencore and have this problem too.

For me the contactsd stoping using the CPU after disable contact sync in the google account.

System adjust->Internet accounts-> Google accout-> turn off Contacts. (For me the mouse can't work to select the account lists an I have used TAB key to hight light and space or enter to select then)

Eu instalei o Ventura no meu Mac Mini 2012 com o opencore e tive o mesmo problema.

Para mim o contactsd parou de usar a CPU depois de desabilitar o sincronismo de contatos do google.

Ajustes do sistema-> Contas de internet->conta do Google->desligar a opção de contatos. (No meu caso o mouse não estava clicando pra selecionar, então precisei o usar a tecla TAB para ir selecionando até chegar na opção desejada e então apertar a tecla espaço ou enter para selecionar)

Indeed turning off the contacts sync in the internet accounts calms the system down, I had two gmail account and a MS Exchange account where contacts were synchronizing.

I have the exact same problem. My only fix thus far has been to sign out of Apple ID on my computer (and stay signed out). If I do that contactsd CPU becomes negligible. It is not ideal as apple functionality is removed but at least I can use my computer.

I just migration assisted from mac mini M1 13.2a to new mac studio max 13.2a .

I opened apple contacts, turned off google CardAV and its a partial fix. contactsd still runs eating 60% of a CPU core. suggestd is also running, sirixxxx also running. manually killing the process in the terminal, it starts right back up after a few secs. so the problem is, what is calling or using contactsd in the first place ?

Next try : turn off icloud CardDAV in contacts app, but left Google on. I then manually killed suggestd, and so far contactsd hasn't restarted. CPU usage is normal. << probably the fix :(

iCloud sync and comms has really been hugely problematic in 13. Freeform leaks memory like crazy if I have it enabled for iCloud, filed BR's and crash logs.

I also turned off the contacts to gmail on my mail accounts and that has seemed to do the trick.

Not sure exactly how that will affect my mail experience, but hope it gets resolved soon with an update.

THANKS FOR THE ADVICE

Thank you. Turning off my Gmail contacts pretty much immediately stopped contactsd from eating up CPU resources. Luckily for me I don't use gmail contacts anyway. I also signed out of iCloud before this and was still signed out during.

Thank you, disabling all google accounts' contacts fixed it for me.

I've got this issue too, combined with siriknowledged acting up in correlation with contactsd. I've found this issue being present on a fresh VM machine of Ventura as well, so this is likely not app related. It could be specific to some data or # of contacts I guess, but this is really ****** and should be considered a bug. contactsd is like the #3 app using cpu on my system and the only fix is disabling contacts for my google account in macOS.

It's not like I use it for a whole lot, but it SUCKS.

Only solution is to turn iff contact sync for Google accounts. This also fixes high cpu usage of siriknowledged

For me the issue was resolved as soon as I turned off the Google accounts contacts.

I have had the same issue as well on 4 Macs as well as my Iwatch ever since I upgraded to Ventura. i've called Apple Support many times and they try to tell me that Contactd is 'not' one of their processes. Wrong! I have found that turning off contacts the icloud sync in all the Internet Accounts alone does not solve the problem unless you also turn off the icloud sync for Freeform. The problem is that you can't see who your imessages are from unless you look at your phone. To manage contracts from multiple platforms I switched over to BusyContact as its easier to work with, but its not integrated to any of the Apple Apps. It's odd that Apple hasn't figured out and addressed this issue yet.

I copied the Google contacts into the Apple contacts app and turned off the contacts sync in the Google account. That solved my issues

Same problem here. I also noticed that when I try to go to the contacts panel in the system settings, contactsd runs completely nuts. Over 800% CPU usage. Also, I am seeing about 20-30 "iCloud Contacts" items here. If I click on one of them, there's only an empty list. I have no idea how this happened.

Turning the contacts off also solved another big issue I was facing since the Venture upgrade: Thunderbird took ages to start (about 2-3 minutes each time), which was super annoying. Now it only takes a couple of seconds.