Since updating MacBook Air to Sonoma I had multiple processes called 'CGPDFService'

It seems to me that this may be due to some old stuff that was installed before you upgraded and is not playing nice with Sonoma.

Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

Voidoider wrote:

Thanks for the reply. As soon as it happens again I'll run Entrecheck -- I presume that I have to run Entrecheck when the problem is occurring?

Etrecheck will produce a report on your hardware and software - notably any third party daemons or agents that may be installed. That information does not change, so there is no reason to wait until the problem reappears.

I've noticed this and I'm looking into it now.

I'm going to throw out a guess, though. It appears that these processes are scanning PDF files; they seem to be accessing fonts installed on my machine as well. (I have a lot of PDFs - documentation for Linux, dev tools, Cisco networking gear, VoIP, you name it).

I suspect that this is part of mds_stores - indexing processes for Spotlight. The fact that these processes are also accessing the ICU libraries (Unicode) is consistent with the idea that they are "reading" the PDFs for indexing. I have 11 of these processes running, but they seem to just be chewing at PDF files, serially.

I'll post on what I find when I can, but thought this might be a good clue for someone.

Hello I updated to Sonoma last week and I also discovered multiple CGPDFService instances were running simultaneously in background stressing the cpu. I just killed 'em all by activity monitor (had to select "force-exit", since just "exit" didn't work). I'll try to keep attention whether they will come back and stay tuned.

I have the same problem with multiple CGPDFService processes. After updating Mac Mini M2 to MacOS Sonoma 14.0. Please, solve this issue in future update.

Voidoier: "Once spotlighted finished indexing the CGPDFservices processes stopped running."

How long did it take? (after killing all the CGPDFservice processes the first time it occurred, now they're back a few days later) (...oh, and yes, mds_stores is also running taking about 25% cpu as well)

By the way, I have this process "mds_stores" too taking about 20-25% of the CPU work. Does it have something to do with CGPDFservice processes?

After switching to Sonoma update, a number of applications (Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, MS Office, etc.):

1) load much slower

2) work with slowdowns

3) take a long time to save files

Update: I let the CGPDFservices processes run: don't know how long they ran, however after about an hour they're not running any more. Will see if they'll come back again.

I've been meaning to trace this down a bit better.

But it looks to me like the initial pass has completed, and so these processes aren't popping up any more. I did see on two separate occasions that my machine was running "hot" - due to this activity - but that was when I wasn't using it. When I started to poke around, the processes disappeared which leads me to believe that they were configured to only run when the system was idle.

Of course, if you're going to go to the trouble of checking for being idle, I'd assume you'd also check for whether a Macbook is on battery, since it's not nice to chew up capacity like that in the background (which was the original complaint). But that would also be a target for a bug to be fixed quickly - so perhaps it is.

Yeah, I don't like seeing lots of copies of processes pop up that I don't understand, but absent more information I think this is "mostly harmless". It certainly does seem limited (I did check) to just scanning PDF files.

Hello,

since yesterday morning I have had the same problem as you with the CGPDF process.

I apologize for my English but it is not my native language.

I have an Apple iMac M1 with Sonoma 14.1.1.

Yesterday morning I did some cleanup on the Mac's HD and moved some files (including many pdfs) from the HD to iCloud.

Despite all the care and following your suggestions, the CGPDF process problem, followed on the Activity Monitor app continues to crash my system to the point of having to force a reboot via the power button.

The very tedious solution is that at Mac startup I have to open Activity Monitor and force the CGPDF process which burns more RAM.

How can I solve this problem?

If it persists I will take the Mac in for service.

Thank you all.

Hi there,

Based on my experience, I'd suggest this: because you moved a bunch of these files, macOS is trying to re-index them. So if possible, I would set aside several hours where you reboot/log into your iMac, and just leave the processes to complete. That is - don't try to actually do any work but leave the machine on and let it run for at least a couple of hours. (As we say: "Una pentola guardata non bolle mai" or so Google Translate would tell me.)

I posted my observations several weeks ago, but have forgotten about this because once the processes went through all of the PDFs I haven't been bothered by it again. I hope this will be true for you as well.

Since you know how to access Activity Monitor, note that you can use the "i" (Inspect - in English at least) function to bring up information about any process. Once you do so, there tab called "Open Files and Ports". None of us here likely know what most of the open files are being used for, but for the CGPDFService processes you will see at least one PDF file in the list and that is the file currently being processed... (and that file should change as that process goes to the next one). That might help you understand a bit better what files are currently being scanned and even how long it's taking the files to be processed.

Also, I don't really use iCloud documents, but it's also possible that your iMac might have to be copying each file it is processing over the network connection. That doesn't really consume considerable CPU or memory, but I could see how might run more of those processes as it's waiting to read the bytes of the file.

This is mostly conjecture, but I hope this helps!

Good morning

Thank you for your replay.

But is the CGPDF process new to Sonoma?

Because before Saturday, Nov. 11, I never had such problems.

Working on many editorial graphics files I produce a quantity of pdf version and as I said before Saturday I never had any problems.

That said, I have noticed that removing pdf files from iCloud still triggers the CGPDF process, I still get the pop up advising me to close open programs (sometimes it advises me to restart the Finder because I don't open programs intentionally) but it doesn't crash like before.

In the meantime, I will follow your advice and let the Mac work to redirect the files and see what happens.

Have a good day.