Searchpartyd using 100% of a cpu - Sequoia 15.5

Question

Searchpartyd using 100% of a cpu - Sequoia 15.5

Searchpartyd is pegged at using basically 100% on my intel iMac running Sequoia 15.5. (Actually 101.3% right at the moment). It never, as far as I can tell, never stops working that hard at what it's doing. It's been doing this for quite a while now.

I have a 6-core machine so it doesn't seem to adversely impact what I use the machine for, but it bothers me that it is doing this.

Allegedly this is an important component in 'Find My' and I do have a number of air tags (12) and a couple of iPhones. My other iMac, an M3, doesn't have this issue as badly though searchpartyd is often running at 50%. On my M1 MacBook Air (Sequoia 15.5), searchpartyd is down around 1%.

iMac 27″, macOS 15.5

Posted on Jun 18, 2025 6:42 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

JohnnyRichGuitar Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 4, 2025 8:18 AM in response to JohnnyRichGuitar

Update July 4, 2025 - curious how it all came to this date ...

After a number of sessions with Apple support - and hat's off the them in a big way for their time a patience - I had to wipe the hard drive completely clean, reinstall the OS and then restore my files. And that seems to have done the trick.

The final session was 3hrs with a senior tech and we looked at basically everything and tried everything she recommended and nothing did the trick. Logging out of iCloud didn't do it, cleaning out the cache had no effect, booting into safe mode didn't help, and so on and so on. iCloud seemed to be 'stuck' updating itself on that machine but we couldn't see why. A few days prior I had reinstalled the OS but that didn't do it.

This is at least my 3rd iMac and I've always told the migration assistant to set up the new one from a time machine backup of the one being replaced. I'm pretty rigorous about doing OS upgrades and, by now, this one has been upgraded thru a number of major releases. I've had this issue for quite some time, a number of months - it would be nice if I remembered exactly when it started but I don't ;-)

Somewhat surprisingly, the 'senior' tech person didn't seem to know *exactly* what searchpartyd does, that would have been interesting to hear. Oh well. Yes, it's integral to Find My but who knows what was causing it to spin its wheels endlessly. Quite the adventure so far.

Thanks to all of you who also helped trying to figure this out, I really appreciate the effort everybody took!

Cheers, John

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Answer 2

Owl-53

Level 10

107,283 points

Jun 20, 2025 8:54 AM in response to JohnnyRichGuitar

To avoid a session of Q&A, Q&A and Q&A

Download the Application Etrecheck ( External Link ) directly from the Developer.

This is a Diagnostic Tool that makes no changes to the computer.

It makes a coherent and readable inventory of both the Hardware and Software used on the computer

The application is free or paid for added features.

The Report will Not Reveal Any Personal Information.

Post back the Full Report - Share Report >> Copy , then paste >>>> using the Additional Text Icon <<<<

Lastly - should you decide to use and post the Report now or at a later time, we are willing to have a very close look and offer some insights

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Answer 3

leroydouglas

Level 10

203,308 points

Jul 7, 2025 10:16 AM in response to JohnnyRichGuitar

JohnnyRichGuitar wrote:

That said, what was making searchpartyd loop (I assume) is still a mystery ... oh well.

If your issue returns with the background process related to the Find My feature

Instead of all the hoop jumping I would simply sign out of your AppleID/Account and back in again to compare your results—this will solve many related sync issue:

Sign into or Sign out of your Apple Account on Mac

Sign in to or out of your Apple Account on Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 4

Jul 7, 2025 10:02 AM in response to JohnnyRichGuitar

I thought I was out of the woods on July 4th, but no!!! It looked promising at first but Pro Tools had problems loading plug-ins or crashing on startup and I had to recreate all of Thunderbird's email accounts. PT not working was the deal breaker ...

So, in the end I wiped the drive clean again, reinstalled the OS and then told Time Machine to restore *everything* from a date when I knew PT was working (June 20th). And finally, that seemed to do the trick as far as PT running, etc. And, to my surprise, searchpartyd has not woken up to grab one of the cpu's.

Some oddities in that the OS thought that some of the apps it had restored were damaged - PT, Thunderbird, Adobe's creative cloud - and I had to reinstall them. Thankfully they all started up with all their previous settings intact.

I'm still grateful for the time Apple spent on this issue. That said, what was making searchpartyd loop (I assume) is still a mystery ... oh well.

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Answer 5

Owl-53

Level 10

107,283 points

Jun 21, 2025 2:20 AM in response to JohnnyRichGuitar

From the exiting report

There appears to be a mis-match of Memory Modules

BANK 0/ChannelA-DIMM0 - 4 GB DDR4 2667

BANK 1/ChannelA-DIMM1 - Empty

BANK 2/ChannelB-DIMM0 - 4 GB DDR4 2667

BANK 3/ChannelB-DIMM1 - 16 GB DDR4 2667

Further

isk0 - APPLE SSD SM0128L 121.33 GB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

Internal PCI-Express 8.0 GT/s x4 NVM Express

disk0s1 - EFI [EFI] 315 MB

disk0s2 [APFS Fusion Drive] 120.88 GB

disk6 - APPLE HDD ST2000DM001 2.00 TB (Mechanical - 7200 RPM)

At least 2 or more external drives attached for whatever propose

Malwarebytes Engine running all the time

Backblaze for Backups to a cloud based service

(PACE Anti-Piracy, Inc. )

I do not see any evidence from the report of Find My as being the culprit

Though we do see

Finder sync extensions:

[Loaded] GraphicConverter 12 Finder Integration - /Applications/GraphicConverter 12.app

[Loaded] Dropbox Finder Extension - /Applications/Dropbox.app

[Not Loaded] OneDrive Finder Integration - /Applications/OneDrive.app

[Loaded] Backup and Sync from Google - /Applications/Backup and Sync.app

[Loaded] Adobe Content Synchronizer Finder Extension - /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Sync/CoreSync/Core Sync.app

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Answer 6

Owl-53

Level 10

107,283 points

Jun 20, 2025 1:03 AM in response to JohnnyRichGuitar

As an experiment

Do you get similar activities when using the On Line version of " Find My "

iCloud

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Answer 7

Owl-53

Level 10

107,283 points

Jun 19, 2025 1:57 AM in response to JohnnyRichGuitar

I do not a definite answer in regards to Intel based computers and the " Searchpartyd " issue

Only using M2, M3 and M4 machines

Below is from a M4 Desktop running current Sequoia 15.5

Perhaps some of this info may point you in certain directs as related it relates the Intel Machine

Doing an Activity Monitor of this process and looking at the " Open files and Ports "

The dominate things seems related to iCloud

Open Files and Port of SearchPartyd

/usr/libexec/searchpartyd

/usr/lib/dyld

/Library/Preferences/Logging/.plist-cache.X9pCWQIH

/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.bundle/English.lproj/SystemVersion.strings

/private/var/db/searchparty/sharedVault/agents/E01B5995-369B-4E65-AA6D-FFC9B79023D0/Keys/55E38333-88ED-4DA0-9663-18EB020DE080/Primary/38692-59325.keymap

/private/var/db/searchparty/sharedVault/agents/E01B5995-369B-4E65-AA6D-FFC9B79023D0/Keys/93D74661-DC4B-436A-A96B-372F0B7A2279/Primary/1-19268.keymap

/private/var/db/searchparty/sharedVault/agents/E01B5995-369B-4E65-AA6D-FFC9B79023D0/Keys/04607D0C-A665-4218-A674-52A40F5BA452/Primary/71397-92030.keymap

/private/var/db/timezone/tz/2025b.1.0/icutz/icutz44l.dat

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Main.db-shm

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/ItemSharingKeys.db-shm

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Observations.db-shm

/usr/share/icu/icudt76l.dat

/private/var/db/searchparty/sharedVault/agents/E01B5995-369B-4E65-AA6D-FFC9B79023D0/Keys/BD0D72FB-D547-4CE4-BC93-7B90B69FE617/Primary/17452-38085.keymap

/private/var/db/searchparty/sharedVault/agents/E01B5995-369B-4E65-AA6D-FFC9B79023D0/Keys/B6F5AB6A-B4AE-47A3-BCB8-90308A9BDB77/Primary/1736-22369.keymap

/private/var/db/analyticsd/events.allowlist

/System/Library/Frameworks/CFNetwork.framework/Versions/A/Resources/DafsaData.bin

/private/var/db/mds/messages/se_SecurityMessages

/System/Library/Frameworks/LocalAuthentication.framework/Support/SharedUtils.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Shared.loctable

/dev/null

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Main.db

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Main.db-wal

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Main.db-shm

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/ItemSharingKeys.db

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Observations.db

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/ItemSharingKeys.db-wal

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/ItemSharingKeys.db-shm

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Observations.db-wal

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Main.db

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Observations.db-shm

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Main.db-wal

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/ItemSharingKeys.db

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/ItemSharingKeys.db-wal

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Observations.db

/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.icloud.searchpartyd/Observations.db-wal

[ctl com.apple.netsrc id 7 unit 37]

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Answer 8

Jun 19, 2025 9:15 PM in response to Owl-53

Hi - thanks for looking into this ...

I thought perhaps because the iMac is located in our apartment near the outside world it was seeing significantly more bluetooth activity from the neighbors but I put the macbook right next to it and it was the same story - searchpartyd on the macbook is using like 2% of the cpu while the iMac is always at 95-105%. So, that's not what's going on. I have a dozen air tags that are mostly near the iMac, but the macbook didn't go crazy when it was in the same location.
What does look significant is that the macbook is running 6 threads and using 136 ports while the iMac is running 10 threads and using 1221 ports. (from activity monitor 'statistics'). Almost 10x as many ports.
Those 1200+ ports aren't showing up in the 'open files and ports' display on the iMac - there are 88 lines in that display for the iMac and 96 lines in that window for the macbook.

Allegedly, searchpartyd is an integral part of 'find my' and its main job is to scan the bluetooth traffic it can see. But, there must be more than meets the eye.

I suppose it's time to do a safe boot and see what that looks like.

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Answer 9

Jun 20, 2025 8:10 AM in response to Owl-53

Not sure what you mean by 'On Line version of "Find My" ....

Searchpartyd starts running and very quickly gets to 100% whether or not 'Find My' is running. I very rarely use that on the iMac.

I just rebooted in safe mode and searchpartyd is behaving the same way. Apple's page on safe mode suggests reinstalling the OS if whatever problem you're having still happens in safe mode. I believe the OS on that machine was 'installed' was when it was done at the factory - I've kept doing upgrades since I got it, but have never reinstalled the OS on that one if memory serves.

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