iCloud Drive on Windows very slow + extreme memory leak

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ExUmbris Author

Level 1

12 points

iCloud Drive on Windows very slow + extreme memory leak

Windows 11 22H2 with iCloud 15.3.138, only iCloud Drive enabled.

System is AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS with 64GB RAM

Internet connection: XFinity cable 2.5Gbps down / 400Mbps up

iCloudDrive.exe has over 50GB allocated (thankfully, not using it all) but this value grows consistently.

Also, I see extremely slow sync performance in both directions in spite of the high-speed Internet connection. This morning I had to give up on some files I needed to transfer to an iPad, and used Google Drive, which sync'ed almost instantaneously. iCloud Drive eventually sync'ed about an hour later.

In the time it took me to compose this, iCloud Drive's memory usage has gone up to 50,731,220 and is climbing steadily, going up by about 30KBytes/second.

Is there a solution?

Windows

Posted on Feb 7, 2025 4:20 PM

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Answer 1

ExUmbris Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 12, 2025 10:01 AM in response to ExUmbris

For anyone who has the same issue, the solution to this was:

Logout iCloud (ignore the scary warning about losing files)
Completely uninstall iCloud for Windows
Reboot Windows
Download a new copy of iCloud (same version)
Install iCloud, disable everything except Drive
Set "Always keep on this device" at the top level of iCloud Drive

After step 5 it was still having problems with the same set of files, except now I could explicitly download them by drag/copying to the desktop. So I enabled "Always keep on this device" hoping to prevent continuous re-sync behavior. It worked.

iCloudDrive.exe is no longer consuming any CPU, I/O activity or large amounts of memory, and all iCloudDrive folders have the green checkmark badge.

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Answer 2

ExUmbris Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 10, 2025 4:31 PM in response to ExUmbris

Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

iCloudHome.exe and iCloudDrive.exe are consistently consuming 8% CPU combined, which on a 16-thread system amounts to 100% of one CPU. And iCloudDrive is up to 65GB memory with 1.15GB Working set.

In the iCloud control panel it's ALWAYS "Uploading 1 item of 4,838".

Come on, Apple, please listen to us and fix this issue!

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iCloud Drive on Windows very slow + extreme memory leak