wallpapervideoextension in Sonoma uses lots of RAM and CPU

leroydouglas wrote:

Try uninstalling your "WallpaperVideoExtension" and compare your results.

if this is third party software

Look for a built-in or in-app uninstaller and use that.

If in doubt refer to the developers website; Support/Help/FAQ/known issues/compatibility /updates/uninstall:

Contact a third party vendor

Contact a third-party vendor - Apple Support

Since everyone else seems to have ignored this...

WallpaperVideoExtension is not a third-party item. It's part of macOS Sonoma, and seems to be responsible for showing and managing videos as wallpapers on the desktop and/or lock screen.

There seems to be no way to disable or remove it (it is on the write-protected system partition), and it continues to run and consume CPU/GPU/RAM even when not using video wallpapers.

8.4% CPU - for a process I'd like to turn off

Device: MacBook Pro 15-inch, 2021 Chip-Apple M1 Max Memory-64 GB MacOS-14.1.1 (23B81) Storage 4TB

Apple please respond ;--)

It is taking up 4gb of RAM and I do not even use dynamic wallpapers at all.

I have a related reason to hate this WallpaperVideoExtension process. When I am attached to my eGPU, the process uses the eGPU. When I try to detact the eGPU this process will not let go of the eGPU and so I can't unplug the eGPU without crashing my laptop or shutting down. Just like everyone else where i'm not using any kind of video or dynamic wallpaper, it's just a solid color. This is very annoying!

Either the process should gracefully let go of the eGPU or there should be a way to disable the process when not using a video wallpaper!

I'm not having CPU issues, but during the past 4 days since my last reboot the process had read over 800GB from disk. That seems excessive and not very disk friendly. Using Sonoma 14.3.1, which I just install about a week ago (was a clean install with no use of Migration Assistant).

I have video wallpapers disabled, and regularly run into this issue.

Just now, when I woke my mac, the video was playing on my "lock screen" despite being disabled everywhere.

Worse, the system seemed to be playing 30+ copies of the video, all overlaid on top of the others, and they slowly faded out creating this bizarre "ripple" across the default sonoma field video.

It ended too quickly to capture, and switched back to my regular wallpaper but it was definitely trippy.

Right now the process is still running, consuming 85% of my M3 Macbook Pro's CPU, while the system is completely idle.

I'd love to see a permanent fix for this. It's insane to deal with constantly.

Same issue here, this driving me nuts ! I'd like to know how to fix it whenever it will be possible. Thanks !

Thanks. This seems to be working. One has to make the script executable with chmod +x <path-to-script>

Thanks, I've set this up