Family Process in Activity Monitor not responding (Sonoma 14.3)

I have etrecheck pro so I will run a new scan later today since I'm not home now.

I've downloaded CleanMyMac and removed anything that I could clean up but the problem is still happening. I was on a chat with Apple and was told I may want to go ahead and reload the OS but I saw that someone else went through that hassle and it didn't fix their issue. Given that their issue wasn't fixed and the reason they were told to do that was same as mine (suspect that something got left behind by an app when it was uninstalled), I wasn't sure it would be worthwhile to try but I ran a full backup yesterday and was planning to find a wired keyboard and wired mouse, then go through that effort.

I need to get to the bottom of it. The only thing I can think of is this: I created a Reminders list for Thanksgiving and shared it with 2 family members. One family member was able to edit the list after she figured out how to accept the share. The other wasn't able to get into her Apple account and I don't think she ever bothered finishing the acceptance. I have since deleted the list and removed everything I could in the Reminders app. I deleted the Reminders app off my mobile device but I can't delete it from the Mac because it's protected from being deleted. I found instruction show to remove protection, delete it, then re-enable protection so nothing else gets accidentally deleted but haven't done that either.

I will do all 3 of the above: (1) re-run etrecheck pro, (2) re-install Mac Sonoma's latest version, and (3) delete the Reminders app with (2) and (3) observed sequentially but independently meaning I'll re-run etrecheck after each but with some time in between observations. I will post at each step hoping someone can continue helping me troubleshoot. At least my system doesn't end up like @CJSpoorman with the spinning color wheel but if I don't fix the cause, I may end up with that severe of an issue. Worst I see now is that my computer is over-heating and I can hear the fan chugging away at full speed for a while which causes other processes I'm trying to do, to behave slowly but without the color wheel.

Wish me luck on the above. I'll be back some time tomorrow with an update. I won't be home for a while today. Thanks for the help @PRP_53!

I ran etrecheck pro immediately upon startup after the system settled (i.e. connected to Wifi, Bluetooth devices (keyboard and mouse) connected, weather app reflected current temp outside, and PowerPanel Plus started (for my UPS).

First run - Family (Not Responding) did not appear. To try and get the issue to appear, I did the following:

1 - I went to General > Family > Family Checklist (view the settings, then exit).

2 - In Family Checklist, I went to Location Sharing which opened the FindMy app. I closed the app.

3 - In Family Checklist, I went to Recovery Contact Added and noticed my husband was listed twice, so I went ahead and removed one of the two times he appeared. Removal was successful.

4 - In Family Checklist, I went to Legacy Contact Added. My husband only appeared once in this area.

I was watching Activity Monitor while doing all this and at no time, did Family (Not Responding) appear in the Activity Monitor under %CPU.

5 - I clicked Done to gt out of Family Checklist and got out of Settings.

A moment or two later, Family (Not Responding) appeared. I quickly went bck into etrecheck pro and re-ran the next report. I've attached the report here.

PRP_53, thanks for the review and feedback including the antivirus info on why the AV programs aren't needed. I uninstalled Bitdefender on the advice of another expert elsewhere in the Community and to see if that was what caused the massive data consumption on my machine which was a problem I dealt with through all January, I reinstalled it to see if I could induce the issue. It did not, so I uninstalled it again.

I'll have to work with Bitdefender to find out why there are remaining files on my machine. As you can see, etpro is sitll detecting files from that app. It has been running fine for 3 years. I'm surprised that it could be problematic. I wish I'd been viewing Activity Monitor previously. I never paid attention to it because everything seemed fine. Bitdefender came with an Uninstallation feature so that's what I used. Is it still possible it's causing the Family (Not Responding) process to quit working? How could that be?

CleanMyMac got rid of cache that I didn't need. That's all I've allowed it to do. I'm afraid to let it do anything else. The trial expired so I will uninstall it. I recently installed that app and it was after the Family (Not Responding) process wasn't working so it's unlikely the cause.

Thanks for your help!

Thanks again for your help.

I'm in the process of uninstalling CleanMyMac since that removal should be rather simple. I appreciate the instructions how to clear system cache files in Safe Mode. In so doing, I still have the issue with Family (Not Responding) since the issue with this process was happening BEFORE I downloaded the CleanMyMac app and nothing new has happened that I'm able to detect, after having cleaned cache using that app so I'm certain that this app isn't the original cause of Family (Not Responding) failure.

Could it be my Photos Library causing the Family (Not Responding) issue? The error just appeared a moment ago and it wasn't due to me going into iCloud settings like I thought yesterday might have triggered it to appear.

I'm stumped how to get the process to stop failing and since I'm at wits end with this whole thing, is it problematic to leave it alone?

From recollection, it seems to take almost no processing time and CPU % seems negligible but I can see it's toggling between Active and Inactive since I turned the filter on for one, then the other, and it periodically disappears from the list since I have it filtered for either/or (Active or Inactive). If I leave All Processes visible, it's always there once it appears unless I Force Quit the process. I'm afraid if I leave it alone, the random issue of the colored wheel will keep happening and I don't know if it's because of this process or not. It's so infrequent, I've just dealt with it. I've had MANY more system issues with Windows machines, so I haven't even really thought this to be an annoyance. I'm just now trying to figure it out because of the etrecheck and wireshark deep dive I've done to get to the bottom of a different issue and it led me this far. :)

I'll execute your Safe Mode instructions tomorrow when I have a few hours to myself. If you could please let me know if you think my Photos library has anything to do with the broken process, I'd love to know your thoughts.

Thanks again!

Thanks PRP_53. I will have to dedicate a day or so to the continuation of troubleshooting. Will report back on any useful findings.

PRP_53, that's really awesome! It seems those of us who aren't working full time tend to stay super busy!

To the topic at hand, I found two Family folders in ~/Library/Containers. Please see attached image. Is this normal or could it be related to the issue I'm having with Family (Not Responding)?

I added a few Date columns for insights on the age of the folders and when they were last opened. One folder group hasn't been opened since last month and the other was somehow opened today.

Ok, thank you for doing some digging. I've done the following in the past and have been noodling on whether this Family (Not Responding) issue has been present for a long time or not. I never noticed but once in a while, my fan speed would come on and get really loud with high air flow for a while when I wasn't doing much (i.e. no video streaming which tends to heat things up more than general web browsing or responding to emails).

I've previously attempted to share a Photo Library from my iPhone to friends / relatives and some haven't been able to figure out how to accept share. (This is over a few years of using the features available.)

Last year, I shared a Reminders list for Thanksgiving Dinner w/2 family members. One was able to see the list and the other wasn't. She said she needed to figure out how to get into her iCloud account.

I've since deleted the shared album and the shared Reminders list.

I currently share the 2TB of iCloud Storage with my spouse.

I Family Share Subscriptions.

I share my location with a few of my family members and my spouse. They also share theirs with me.

I tried sharing Notes with one of my nephews but he wasn't able to receive and see the Notes so we tried having him share with me and that didn't work either. His brother and I share Notes without any issues. To date, I have no idea how to get this working for the nephew who I wasn't successful setting this up with.

That's pretty much everything I can recall doing relative to Family and the Share concept. I would be perfectly happy to unshare everything I've shared, clear cache, and start sharing all over again. There's nothing that I'd lose, that I can't set back up again in a few minutes.