imagent memory leak in Mountain Lion

I'm going to weigh in here too and say this issue is driving me nuts. It's preventing me from working most days and I've tried everything to fix it, but alas, no.

I don't have the time to reisntall OS X and redownload and reindex all my Dropbox again. I haven't had to reinstall OSX because of a bug since Power PC days and I'm quite annoyed.

I've had the same issue and spent an afternoon trying to remedy it with an Apple Genius to no avail. The only solution I've found is to not use the new Messenger or Ichat, but use Adium instead. When imagent does load, I useactivity monitor to kill it as rapidly as I can, which usually takes up to 6 times, before it finally settles down. Upon reboot, providing I am not using iChat or Messenger, it does not reappear 99 out of 100 times. On the rare occasion that it does, I follow the same procedure.

It is a nightmare and a disappointment from Apple. I did file a support ticket through the Genius to make sure the developers were aware of it in hopes it would be remedied quickly, but so far crickets.

Man, this issue went away for a couple of months, sigh and then just last night it's returned. I was just checking back to find out if any of you have found a solution?

Mine has been doing it for about 6 months. I just did a clean install, guess what, it's still doing it. This is terrible.

One thing you could try is disk utility. See you you can perform first aid on your HD. Also there's and app called memory clean on the app store. I recommend it. It cleans up unnecessary processes running in the background.

I've got messages running all the time and have no issues such as that.

What other third-party software do you have that might be causing it to run away? Anything that interacts with Messages or FaceTime?

Difficult to figure out as there aren't very many hits on it, besides this thread.

That is not a long term fix. I am now using Adium and will not open messages or facetime. Lets see how this plays out. I am very disapointed with this. This needs to bre resolved.

My address book....

Maybe something is wrong in that? That would be the only thing I can think of...

No, that runs all the time, too.

Any messages in Console related to imagent that might point to something else?

This is clearly something to do with message and facetime. What worked for me is right clicking on messages in the dock and setting it to offline and then starting it and logging in. The other thing is I never had any problems with Messages until I logged in with my apple id the other day. Try removing your accounts and adding them back one at a time.

Ok. I think I solved this. It was happening on both my macs. It seemed when I was signed in with iMessages using my Apple ID and signed in with AIM at the same time then this was coorelated with the problem for me. Disabling the AIM account seems to have fixed it, or if you have to use AIM then sign out of the iMessages account. There might be other combinations of sign ins that lead to the issue, I'm not sure. But this worked for me. Everything was fine until I signed in with iMessages account. That's when I started having issues. I was able to run the iMessages on its own, or with Jabber/google, but not with AIM.

Same problem here. MBA 2012. Runnning Gtalk, AIM and iMessages.

Insanely frustrating problem. Started about a month ago.

Also, perhaps unrelated, AIM started failing for me around the same time. I had to update the config to NOT use SSL to get it functioning again.

I hope Mavericks gives some love to Messages. This app is suffering.

Hi All,

Sorry I missed this one.

The iMac I use every day came with Lion on it and I tried the Messages Beta.

Also the Mac User Account was in fact Migrated from Leopard (iChat 4.x.x)

That particular iChat had the Chax Add-on installed and therefore had references to that Add-on in the com.apple.ichat.plist

This would have had the potential to disrupt Messages when I updated to Mountain Lion. (I bought the Core 2 Duo iMac quite late in Lion's cycle and did not use iChat 6 that much).

I have removed the .plist and restarted the Messages beta fairly early on to exclude things like this.

As has been said the IMAgent app is used by both FaceTime and Messages.

As FaceTime can be turned Off I would use that as a diagnostic tool if possible.

An Alternative would be to Disable the accounts in Messages in turn.

Note.

I have an AIM registered name, two @mac.com names, And @me.com name and an @icloud.com name logged in to AIM as well as the Linked Apple ID being logged in to iMessages.

In Addition I have an Yahoo account, a GoogleTalk none and another Jabber account also logged in but do not have this issue.

9:18 PM Saturday; August 24, 2013

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.4)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

I can confirm that I am now seeing this on 10.8.5 and my computer stopped working while we were watching a movie.

I saw the imagent thing the next time I restarted - up to 8 Gigs of memory (how is this acceptable???) and indeed, I was using AIM account with Messages for the first time.

While that was happening, an iChat I had on the phone with my daughter synced to my computer. I believe some time recently I configured imessages to sync to other devices, but I couldn't tell you where or how I did that.

I hope this doesn't continue to plague my system. After all, I only have 8 cores and 16 Gb of memory. Not really enough to run OS X.

Hi,

Is the watching of a Movie related to the use of Messages ?

iChat certainly had iChat Theatre that allowed you to "Share" by showing movies (or any file actually) this way.

I know it is no longer in Mavericks and Yosemite (you can share from a Video Chat but this Sends the File and no longer displays it).

I can't remember if Mountain Lion and Messages 7.x.x still has this feature.

In Messages you can only sync iMessages on an iPhone and Mac (iChat is the preceding App that could only use AIM, Jabber or Yahoo at iChat 6)

Having an AIM app on an iPhone and Messages on a Mac with an AIM Login open at the same time may display the same AIM chat (you have to allow multiple Logins).

I am not sure why this app is holding on to the Memory after a restart unless it was involved in showing the movie in the first place.

Then it is possible it thinks the task is incomplete and is "stuck" in that sense waiting for it to be re-connected.

This tread was last added to in August 2013 (I just happen to be still (somehow) Subscribed to it and had an email about a new post)

I am not aware that the issue was ever solved in Mountain Lion.

Mavericks was released not long afterwards on the 22nd Oct

Syncing iMessages

Enable the Messages app on the iPhone and wait for it to Verify the iPhone Number

Enable the Mac version by Adding an Apple ID to Messages in/for the iMessages account and wait for that to verify.

then Send from the iPhone Number (it will only display the one choice in Send and Receive) to the Apple ID (Mac)

Return from the Apple ID (the Mac will not display options at this point).

Now add the Apple ID to the iPhone Settings.

It will add the Apple ID to the Send and Receive options.

It will cause a pop up on the Mac saying what the iPhone is not using.

Accepting the pop up adds the iPhone Number to the Mac and reveals the Start Conversation From drop down.

iMessages sent to the iPhone number will now appear on the Mac as well.

iMessages sent to the Apple ID will also appear on both devices.

Adding the Apple ID to other iOS devices will pick up on the two way link and accepting the pop up there will add the iPhone Number as well.

10:17 pm Friday; February 27, 2015