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).

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

That's way worse than it was here. Clearly, Apple has some issues in this department.

I had this issue too, i have a 2020 Macbook Pro i5 and contactsd was taking 90%-130% of CPU usage. After more than 6 months I've decided to just turn off all my contacts from the internet accounts settings and it works. The process isn't there anymore but the obvious downside is that none of my contacts are on my computer.

But at least I can use my computer normally again.

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 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.

if you are on the OS beta program, file the bug ! ! ! otherwise in finder menu, Help, Send Finder Feedback

or Feedback - macOS - Apple

just be polite - there are real people reading this stuff and filing the reports, or adding One Mores to existing bugs. the more consistent the level of complaints, the more it will get on some one's radar to fix.

FWIW only one of my 3 machines is plagued by this : the newest M1 that had user account brought over from old machine. the other two don't seem to be as bad.

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

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.

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.

I have had the same issue, however it has been around for some time and even persists through different Mac OSX versions. Sometime rebooting will make it go away for a while but it has always come back. I do also have google and apple contacts lists. I'll try turning off the google contacts and see if that helps.

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.

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.

Thanks for the hints. I tried to send feedback via Finder, but I cannot see this help menu item? Maybe it's just available for beta testers? I am using the regular release version of macOS Ventura 13.1. Mine is not an M1 Macbook, I am still using the last generation before M1 (i.e. the last Intel MacBook Pro).