XProtect Remediator taking 120% RAM freezing macOS every day
This MacOS Malware scanner that runs at root takes up 47GB of 32, far exceeding hardware limits, bloating virtual memory, and slowing the computer to a crawl. It's meant to run during times of low CPU latency but since most of my work is Web Dev, I don't use much power but need the RAM. It freezes the machine daily.
What's sad is what little control we have over it and that we can predict when the cycle will be over and how the machine will run well again by calculating 6GB per minute times the difference between the current RAM use and peak which is around 47GB. In the above case, one can expect the machine to be free and running again after 2hours and 6 minutes. While work can be planned around it, the issue is ridiculous. It doesn't make sense for a Malware scanner to take up so much memory, hijacking a computer we pay for. Even sadder, despite knowing when it will be over when it runs, there's not a predictable pattern for when it starts. Ideally it should only run when the machine is asleep.
Worse, because it runs at the root level, there's no way to force quit nor is there any known option to either disable or limit this. The issue has been reported to Apple and there was an issue ID sent for this. Updating to the last OS version didn't fix the problem either (Sonoma 14.3.1).
This is both a heads up to anyone who may be having this issue that it exists, has been documented, and reported. Any workarounds besides timing it is appreciated. Hopefully the good folks at Apple engineering find a fix for this, it's truly frustrating not to have control over one's machine performance when you need it.
There's a related thread about this but not the same as this issue, only similar in terms of process involved.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253890200?login=true&sortBy=best
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iMac 21.5″
