mapspushd eating CPU time

Tonnert wrote:

On my 3 Macs (MacBook Air M1, MacBook Pro 12" M1 Max & MacBook Pro 15" i7) mapspushd is eating 80-90% CPU time. After killing the process, it stays away, usually. But starting the Maps app, will immediately bring back the mapspushd process.

Macos 13.4 (22F66)

This has been going on for weeks now, and it's frustrating as it causes all MacBooks to have a batterylife cut in half, when I forget about killing the process. I've installed Little Snitch to see if that would make a difference and unfortunately, it doesn't.

Does anybody have an idea what the cause could be, I'm grateful for any insights.

I would start by Uninstall all third party apps that are Cleaners/Optimizers/VPN/Anti-Virus

all known to cause issues on the macOS

To trouble shoot further you can:

—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account Change Users & Groups settings on Mac - Apple Support

This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account. 

—A SafeBoot How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

Takes a bit longer to get to the login screen, does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, including dynamic loader cache, font cache, etc., third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

a reboot will put it back to normal mode.

This test will tell you if third party interference; most* extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.

My issues with mapspushd on 2 Macs and battery drain on an Ultra and Series4 watch are seemingly resolved after updating to MacOS 13.5 and WatchOS 9.6 just released yesterday. Maps is no longer a the highest drain process on the Macs, and battery life on the Apple Watch Ultra seems back to normal. I strongly suspect there was something errant in one of the recent urgent security updates (a, b or c) but have no idea the root cause and why it wasn't more broadly noticed. It was literally halving my Ultra watch battery life.

Regardless, thanks for the reply and suggestion of Little Snitch on the Macs. I switched to using Lulu in recent years, which seems less intrusive, but I do appreciate the thought. If I'd turned off Maps access in Lulu, that might have helped. As it is, everthing just works again. ;-)

Same, all my up to date Macs have Maps and mapspushd consuming near 100% of a core all the time. Killing the process or application (which isn't visibly running) doesn't help...they come back. Now killing the process in Terminal, but think maps will return again.

In addition, seems like WatchOS got this too in 9.52 (latest). Ultra and Series 4 battery life is halved. Absolutely terrible. The Ultra watch battery drain is what I noted first, then later saw MacOS idle CPU far above norms on both Mini M1 and Studio Ultra M1. I went so far as to re-pair both watches with iPhone 13 Pro Max with no success...battery life still 1/2 what it was before most recent updates.

I thought maybe it could be related to a recent Strava app install (app on phone & watch, and in browser) for biking, but don't think so.

It seems like there was some pervasive location info change across all the OSs that is trying to consume maps all the time, eating battery and CPU cycles.

Incredibly frustrating not to find any more detailed info on this online. Console logs - sample and search "map"doesn't even seem to show how it's used, in background or via some haywire app.

Anxiously awaiting the next update of the OS ecosystem and hope Apple noticed to fix it!