wallpapervideoextension in Sonoma uses lots of RAM and CPU

Same issue here. Didn't even use those silly "live" wallpapers and noticed a hot chassis on my 16" M1 Max. One of the reasons was WallpaperVideoExtension with >25% CPU usage for nothing. Please fix!

Apple OS quality became just unacceptable. Bugs and issues everywhere. Could they please stop their unpopular, annual releases and focus on QUALITY and PERFORMANCE first, again? Thanks!

I've created a script to kill the wallpaper extension every 15 min because this is out of control, I don't even use this thing.

at

/Applications/Scripts/wallpapperkiller.sh

with content, uncomment second line if the ImageExtension also bothers you with high cpu usage.

pgrep WallpaperVideoExtension | xargs kill -9
# pgrep WallpaperImageExtension | xargs kill -9
date > /Applications/Scripts/wallpaperkiller.log

then, run

crontab -e

and add the following line

*/15 * * * * /Applications/Scripts/wallpapperkiller.sh

you can also run this script manually if you want, each other time

more info about crontab can be found here https://medium.com/@justin_ng/how-to-run-your-script-on-a-schedule-using-crontab-on-macos-a-step-by-step-guide-a7ba539acf76

Same issue. It is really frustrating.... I've MacBook Pro 15 2019 i7(6 core) that i bought brand new from Apple... with just original/purchased software. Used only for work... and now all fans are running so loud, because i.e. /System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions/WallpaperVideoExtension.appex/Contents/MacOS/WallpaperVideoExtension and /System/Library/Frameworks/VideoToolbox.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/VTDecoderXPCService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/VTDecoderXPCService processes eats so much CPU and RAM. By the way... I am CCNP and LPIC-3 certified... and I try to use this system for smooth QUIET hard work... and now I thinking if 10 yeard old Lenovo laptop is not the better and QUIETer way how to do my jobs.....

As our clients says: "Please fix it ASAP! How could this go to live? Do you have some PQA or testing? How you test this wallpaper extension before it goes live? We all pay for your devices thousands of $$$$...."

So please.... please fix it as soon as possible.

I have this same issue: I am not using any of the Apple "Dynamic Wallpapers", but "WallpaperVideoExtension" burns tons of CPU time. Any advice on how to disable this from running would be much appreciated

-- its a total battery killer, and leads to the fan on my MBPro running quite often, even under otherwise light loads.

If you are not using a live wallpaper and this is an issue open the activity monitor and find that process ID. it will be in the column "pid". open the terminal and do a kill -9 on that process. so if your process ID is 412 enter the following in the terminal

kill -9 412

If you want some screen saver then:

1. Change wallpaper:
2. Change Screensaver:
3. Kill wallpapervideoextension
4. Peace :)

I'm noticing this issue more since 14.2... I understand while the wallpaper is animating it might take some resources but once it stops it shouldn't take much... I'm finding during normal operations it's just taking ~32% cpu all the time on my m3 max...

system settings > wallpaper turn off show as screensaver

basically, the motion background, is constantly accessing the disk rather than via ram, turning this off should stop it. And updating to or beyond 14.3

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.

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.

I'm having the same issue as all of the above. Fan runs almost continuously. When I kill 'wallpapervideoextension', everything goes back to normal. MacBook Air 13', 2020 running Somona 14.1.12. I'm like EJW Tas, that I find I have to re-force-close almost every time I start to work at the machine. I'll keep watching this thread. Thanks!