Lion Finder CPU at 100%: new Air battery life down from 6 hrs to 90 min

I've been using Lion for about two weeks and I've suddenly had the same sort of thing. MBPro, more than 100% of CPU being given to "Finder". Tried killing/relaunching Finder, but the CPU gets busy again.

Closing the lid doesn't turn off the fan - the machine does not sleep, and on re-opening, Finder is busy again at 75-110% of CPU. I notice that mds is also running, but usually only at about 30% to 50% CPU.

The most recent significant change? I finally got around to installing XCode 4.1 on this machine today.

The same thing happens on my MBP running 10.7.1. I'm having to force quit Finder once or twice a day because it's gobbling 100% of the CPU.

—Andreas

The same thing happens once or twice a day on my MBP 2011 running LION updated from LEOPARD. Finder problems seems to impact other opened apps like firefox which grabs 100% and over of the CPU.

For me, killing and restart finder resolves the problem. I have XCode 4.1 too but the problem occured before the XCode installation.

I think the problem did not occured under LEOPARD even if the short time experience for this OS X version.

Génaël

Same here running fresh installed MacOSX 10.7 on MBP2009.

You probably have a finder window open on "All items". Im my case if I close that window (or go to a "normal" folder) the usage drops to a normal level immediately.

i'm having the same issue. mines very frequent. multiple times a day.

i use ipulse so i notice pretty quick when it happens.

once finder starts using 100% of the processor if i do happen to miss it (like when i'm sleeping) other apps will start to use 100% as well.

normally 'relaunching finder' fixes the finder issue for x amount of time and quiting and relaunching the apps seems to fix them.

i noticed when i launch handbreak for crunching video that if i let it sit open for around maybe 10 minutes finder will start to use 100% processor followed by handbreak. this has happened around maybe 4/4 times i've left handbreak open.

i've been pretty lazy about this issue but it's starting to get annoying so i'm gonna start looking for fixes. anyone have any suggestions besides checking out the console log (which i'll be doing next time i notice finder kick up.)

for the record i'm running a 2011 macbook pro 15" lion 10.7.1 and my finder issue was going on in 10.7 and persisted through 10.7.1 (obviously.)

I'm seeing the same issue as well (in 10.7.2), but I can shed a little light on the cause, after some experimentation. My default window has a lot of files in it (168 items, viewing by icon), but it's not calculating folder sizes or "showing item info" or anything fancy, and it's not viewing "all items". Closing the one window, though, drops the Finder CPU usage to nothing. Reopen a window, and it pops back up around 95%. This is only when I have it set to "icon view"...if I view in a list, CPU usage drops to normal.

Having a window open with fewer items (29, or even 95) yields a normal Finder CPU usage. But opening a different folder with lots of items as well (195) causes the same issue.

So it appears to be caused by:

- Having a Finder window open, in Icon view only, with something like "more than 100 items in it"

Close the window, change the view method, or switch to a different window with fewer items, and the problem instantly goes away.

Perhaps it's time to report a bug to Apple...

I have a MBP mid 2010 with 8GB RAM. No issue after the Lion upgrade. Bug a week ago Lion Finder started to consume more than 100% CPU making the fans run constantly. It also happens that other open applications, as PowerPoint, go with it up to more than 100% CPU usage. Very often, also Flash Player is going up as well.

Force quitting Finder brings Finder back to normal CPU levels while the other applications remain at 100%. After some hours Finder starts again going up to 100%

That is certainly a bug Apple needs to fix quickly.

i figured my issue out. it probably isn't the same as everyone elses though.

i always create a swap and downloads partition aside of my main partition then simlink the downloads partition to ~/

anyway i had named the partition downloads and simlinked it as downloads instead of Downloads and finder was freaking out. changed it and i haven't had the problem since.

hope this may help someone, in the off chance.

Kao is probably right, it isn't the same for everybody.

I just figured out my problem: it was Sugarsync. Sugarsync actually was heavily using Finders resources. With Sugarsync closed, all CPU usage went back to normal. What a relieve :-)

I'm having the exact same problem. For me it's the applications folder. Did you even end up submitting a bug report?

Are you guys running SuperDuper? I am getting the same symptoms. Additionally, on the left hand side of my Finder window under "Devices" the main hard drive text is flipping back and forth between "Machintosh HD" and "backupMacintosh1". backupMacintosh1 is the name of my SuperDuper backup disk image! Quitting SuperDuper doesn't seem to fix the problem, though. My SuperDuper image is located on my iMac's second hard drive (Macintosh HD 2).

Thanks - Ben.

Yeah! The same as you said! The problem with thumbnail view!

Apple please solve this ******* problem 🙂 Thanks!

I use ForkLift as a temporary solution...