You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

rsfromhome Author

Level 1

28 points

What is AddressBookSourceSync?

I know it is controlled by a LaunchAgent, and I'm told its plist shows that it supports push, which must be why its running, and syncs with MobileMe (or something called 'dot-mac'), Exchange, and some other things.

My worry is I don't have a MobileMe account, nor a dot-mac whatever. I have not yet logged into Mail, so it should _not_ be looking for Exchange.

And now my question is, why does it pop up, asking for permission to access my Keychain every so often and disrupt my work? It refuses to go away when I press 'cancel' the first time but takes 3 or 4 'cancels'. And then, after a little break, it comes back until I key in my password. Then it appears satisfied. Until the next time!

What is it trying to access from my Keychain? And why has it started happening only within the last few weeks? It never used to happen when I first installed Lion. Nor even the update to OS X 10.7.1.

Thanks for any illuminating replies.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.1)

Posted on Sep 30, 2011 8:26 PM

Top-ranking reply

marianfromhermagor

Level 1

9 points

Posted on Oct 14, 2011 6:00 AM

I observe since a couple of days (perhaps since I upgraded to 1.7.2.?) that "AddressBookSourceSync" eats up my 8 GB iMac memory until the machine comes to a full stop.

Only terminating this in Activity Monitor helps. But a couple of minutes later this devil comes up again.

What is it? Where does it come from? Does it have something to do with iCloud sync?

Thanks a lot.

Best regards

Marian

View in context

77 replies

Oct 18, 2011 7:13 PM in response to subsallowicz

I am having the same problem. I made sure I was signed out of MobileMe, but my memory still gets eaten up. This morning I let it run for 2 hours when the sync finished and the memory returned to normal.

Oct 19, 2011 3:19 AM in response to rsfromhome

My MobileMe still contains several active picture galleries and the iDisk.

What will happen to them, if I sign out?

I guess I will loose everything, right?

Oct 19, 2011 8:16 AM in response to Presswood

Thanks for the advice. This actually worked for me until I restarted. Now AddressBookSourceSync is acting up again. It does come in waves though. Right now it's at 8.8% CPU and 2.30GB Real Memory. At no point does it disappear from the top-5 in Activity Monitor.

lsday

Level 1

4 points

Oct 19, 2011 9:47 AM in response to rsfromhome

Had the same problem of Address Book / AddressBookSync run wild after upgrading to 10.7.2 and icloud, and this is what I did which seems to have fixed it.

1. Made sure that mobileme was not syncing anymore (system preferences)by logging out of MobileMe.

2. As a precaution, backed up my address book (1700 contacts) locally, and quit address book.

3. Checked to see if icloud had all of my contacts. www.icloud.com

4. Made sure that AddressBookSync was not running in Activity monitor. If it is, kill it.

5. Went into my users library (~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/) trashed everything EXCEPT Confguration.plist.

6. Went back into System preferences/icloud and made sure that Contacts was checked off. Once checked the sync started.

Oct 19, 2011 2:38 PM in response to lsday

Works for me. Thanks a bunch! (Where's that champagne emoticon?)

Oct 19, 2011 8:58 PM in response to lsday

Worked for me, too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Oct 20, 2011 3:09 PM in response to lsday

Thank You. I had deleted this and deleted that but never the whole thing (minus the config of course). Now Address Book is ticking along at 100MB instead of 2+ GB. Thanks again. If I was an emoticon type person I would add one.

Oct 20, 2011 3:52 PM in response to lsday

Thank you, I have the exact same issues, and your solution sounds promising. I can't find the users library anymore, though... where has it gone?

Oct 20, 2011 5:15 PM in response to dokterphil

Hold down Option while you click the Go menu in Finder.

Oct 27, 2011 11:11 AM in response to John_Agger

Seems like it was helpful for a lot of people that have the same syncing issue. But I'm skeptical about deleting stuff from my Mac, First of all, when following Isday's steps it doesnt appear to the same places as the instructions, is it happening with some one else?Does apple will fix that soon?

Oct 29, 2011 2:10 PM in response to lsday

Isday. I followed your instructions on my Imac 27" and my macbook pro 15". Both computers have been working great for 2 full days... I will report back in a couple more days; but from what I can tell thus far this has solved my problem...!

Thank you so much🙂

Oct 31, 2011 7:45 AM in response to lsday

Thanks for posting a way to handle this. It has been driving me crazy since iCloud was released.

Nov 5, 2011 7:30 AM in response to lsday

I did this, after which AddressBookSourceSync no longer showed in Activity Monitor:

In System Preferences, click on iCloud, uncheck Address Book, select Delete from Mac, then check Address Book again.

Nov 6, 2011 5:22 AM in response to lsday

@ lsday:

When I delete the address book (except Configuration.plist) the content of the folder magically reappears.

When I try to perform step 6. of your list - checking contacts in System Preferences / iCloud a message appears "Do you want to merge contacts with iCloud? Your information on thsi Mac willbe uploaded and merged with the contacts stored in iCloud"

I don't want this as only want to donwload contacts from iCloud not merge nor upload...

Any help? Note: This is on a MacBookPro. The above steps 1.-6. worked fine on my iMac but not on the MBP.

Nov 8, 2011 10:11 AM in response to lsday

Hi There,

I don't appear to have the Library/Application Support/Address Book directory. Should I have? I've tried everything else detailed on this topic, but the **** thing keeps coming back and reducing my MBP to a 10 year old Windows '95 machine!!

Please Help!

What is AddressBookSourceSync?