High Band With "idleassetsd" & "nsurlsessiond" back ground process

I had this issue on Sonoma. I used some basic methods to see the unencrypted content, and it was due to screen savers/wallpapers. The thing is, I clicked on them and ultimately did not use them, so it would seem that it triggered a background download of a ton of large high-def video files, regardless of the fact that they are no longer selected (and they continue to download). It doesn't bother me, as it seems to throttle itself down when other traffic starts to show up, so I haven't noticed any slowdown. I can see the video files consuming hard disk space (I took a snapshot, let it sit, took another, and compared the difference (please don't tell me that there are a million better ways of doing that. I was doing it for another issue primarily).

Edit:

I found a SQLite database of what it is downloading. However, I wouldn't mess with that without talking to Apple Support first.

You can run lsof if you are comfortable with the terminal. Here is what mine showed:

user@computer ~ % lsof | grep -i idle
Wallpaper   581 user    4r      REG                1,4  481292429             5366651 /Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer/4KSDR240FPS/097CA871-A1C2-40F7-97F0-EFAABF555BBC.mov

If you prefer using a GUI, there is a great free program that basically visualizes the lsof output. The utility is Sloth.

Note that it takes "snapshots" and is not a monitor (although you can have it refresh at certain intervals).

Output From Sloth:

Note that in both cases, the output can be very large, which is why I used "grep -i idle" and searched in Sloth (I highlighted the search box in the top right).

I would not recommend blocking this connection in any way. The OS uses this to download many things. I would figure out exactly what it is downloading and work from there. Otherwise, you may have issues in the future when the OS is trying to download something that you do want, but it is blocked. Additionally, it will continue to try to connect and download and continue to fail, which would be undesirable.

Another update, I am upgraded to Sonoma 14.7 OS, and the problem persists.

This time IdleAssetsD downloaded 62GBytes of lovely 4K video wallpaper.

I found my system was getting hot again (many days after the upgrade) because I denied (with LittleSnitch firewall) the process idleassetsd from reaching out to sylvan.apple.com only. The process was holding 160% CPU threads and box got hot. Once I allowed access, the thing hogged my DSL line loading and loading and loading.

Once I moved the box to a place with fiber internet, I let it finish the 62GB download.

I found where SOME of the files live, anyways, from reading a reddit thread:

/Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer/4KSDR240FPS

A bunch of, I deduce, 4K 240 frames per second standard definition.

But this directory has only 12GB of files, so I have to wonder where the rest of the 62GB download went to.

Still broke. Still needs fixing.

In this screengrab, activity monitor shows the download total size since it started yesterday. The lower part shows the LittleSnitch monitor of the download. only 38G was downloaded on fiber. Mind you, I cannot watch Apple TV or do other things when this download is happening in the background (DSL again)..

Now, I've upgraded from Sonoma 14.7 to Sequoia 15.0.1

Before upgrading, I deleted 12GB of screen saver files in

/Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer/4KSDR240FPS

After the upgrade to Sequoia, then IdleAssetsD got back to its usual network-hog behavior.

I still have not figured out where the extra 50GB of screen savers are being stored.

But here is a hint.

Can someone who knows look at the Property List at

/Library/Application Support/com.apple.TVIdleScreen/TVIdleScreenSnapshotLog.plist

What I see there are the same directories and filenames that are being downloaded.

Can I edit this Plist safely, I'm not the expert to try this?

Maybe switch from 4K 240FPS big files to download low-res files that take less space?

Maybe satisfy the daemon by just deleting all but one video from the plist?

Maybe disable this download altogether?

Other users have said IdleAssetsD will only download the video if selected in wallpaper or screen saver. Not true in my experience on Sonoma. I've not selected any of these items and they all are downloading, if I delete them they just re-download.

And although these items are not selected on my system, I do have an Apple TV in the house.

If my Apple TV is downloading these too, separately, it's no wonder I have such poor performance using Apple TV even set to a lower-res display. I've taken now to unplugging my Apple TV power when not in use, and logging out or disconnecting the network on my Mac mini.

Image below is the download in progress after upgrade to Sequoia 15.0.1

After 1 Tb of lost internet I opened activity monitor and found out the problem to fix it my dad changed the wallpaper to a noodle that I’ve made ,and then the internet usage monitor dropped

I've found that it might work if Low data mode is turned on while on a specific WLAN.

Wi-Fi settings > right-click the connected network > Network Settings... > Low data mode > restart wifi

Reference: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/461119/unable-to-stop-process-idleassetsd-from-consuming-infinite-bandwidth-on-macos

Continuing my earlier post (can't edit): I tried another experiment. Turn off all networking, the firewall reports all requests to sylvan.apple.com stopped (of course). However, in Activity Monitor, the idleassetsd process CPU usage still spiked, and if I killed the process, it still came back, and still continued to spin doing something and was the highest-cpu-using process on the list. Doing nothing.

I am seeing my Mac mini get physically hotter than usual, and when I run speed.cloudflare.com and other windows in Safari I actually see screen flickers I've never seen before (GPU too hot? weird) - maybe my hardware is failing independent of this issue?

Can someone file a bug report on idleassetsd network hog to apple - I can't figure out where to do that? I no longer have support on this machine. And, if it's a TV iOS feature, but reported and manifests under MacOS (where I see it ), will it get lost in the clouds?

Circling back to my original post, "At some point, I might get to transport the MacMini to a place with Google Fiber and let it download to its heart's content. "

So I got the MacMini moved to fast internet, in LittleSnitch firewall I allowed sylvan.apple.com access from idleassetsd, and let it rip. And it did. I checked back in less than an hour and idleassetsd process quit downloading, and the usage reported from LittleSnitch progressed from 124GB total to 132GB.

As Roos_Cr reported, there is not a solution for rural DSL-connected customers (in my case, even 0.5MBit download burden did cripple the entire home DSL bandwidth). And 10's of GBytes forced download is NOT OK for folks with data/usage rate caps.

It was likewise a time-sink of hours with DSL tech support (Brightspeed), and an embarrassment while I insisted with the DSL provider it was all their lines being the problem: "you seem to have high usage, are there other devices connected?" (Well, they are hopeless at 4Mbit/512kbit in best-case). Adding insult to crap, their further excuse for poor services: "all my neighbor and my copper lines feed through one box" and if my neighbors are "using internet a lot" it could degrade my service. (hunh?)

My remedy now is to know this: when I transport my MacMini to a fiber place (in a town far away) to install MacOS upgrades, I have to let the machine sit operating for some hours to download in the background what was NOT downloaded as part of the install by idleassetsd.

On MacOS, I could finally divine the cause with LittleSnitch. On my laptop machine, I left it running long enough it finished its epic download. On the Apple TV, I have no such diagnostic tools, and idleassetsd is a TVos thing too.

My solution was to install Snail from Murus. Since I can't stop it, and stuck with 22mbps DSL, I can throttle that process so that it trickles down and doesn't interfere with the rest of the network traffic.

I tried below steps and stopping the process within 1 minute by killing through crontab setting -

open terminal then

sudo crontab -e

add Below lines in your text editor :

*/1 * * * * pkill -f idleassetsd

*/1 * * * * pkill -f nsurlsessiond

I have found that setting Low Data Mode on my network (wifi) connection does nothing to stop IdelAssetsD from hogging the connection. By the way, if I use ethernet wired direct to my DSL modem, the ethernet settings don't seem to have anything called "low data mode", just the WiFi network settings have this. At least I didn't find it on the Ethernet side.

IdelAssetsD does not respect the Low Data Mode wifi setting, it does not throttle down the rate at which it grabs data, and it does not stop downloading. If the daemon is blocked by LittleSnitch firewall from reaching sylvan.apple.com, it simply pumps out 1000 requests per second (all denied), the thread CPU usage drives to 160%, and the MacMini heats up considerably. Forever.

This is on my rural DSL line that has 4Mbit down / 512k up.

This problem seemed to go away a while back, but with an upgrade to Sonoma 14.7 OS the thing started downloading more screen savers: 60GBytes of 4K wallpaper videos.

Oh yes, and one other thing. When this thread started, I set my wallpaper and screen savers to a static image (photo album). So I don't know what tripped it back on again. For you who say this "worked" for them, wait until the next time you upgrade the OS and see if it sticks.

I suspect any time Apple releases new higher-def versions of screen savers or releases an OS update, this idiot daemon will go out and grab them. I'm about to upgrade to Sequoia 15.0.1. I hope my SSD has enough room, it has 225GB in use out of 250GB and I suspect it won't fit, if only I could free up 60GB of space..... This is absurd. This storage hog has the potential to brick their older hardware?

Just curious what does 127.0.0.1 signify, does it result in a noop?

When I deny access using the LS firewall, idleassetsd does something else later on, when it wakes up: On my mac mini it generates 1000 network access requests per second, and never stops. Idleassetsd seems to require completion as measured by download of specific files. Seems if network connection blocked by LS the daemon code just spins on “try again,” which is a bug (no delay before retry). The process becomes the top-consumer cpu thread, the computer gets quite hot all the time. Apple’s killing my mac mini by baking it.

I’ve got to where I won’t leave this machine powered up 24/7 in the living room. Shut off when not in use. Annoying as it’s my music server too.