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What is com.apple.IconServicesAgent?

Hi, after installing Mavericks there's a new process 'com.apple.IconServicesAgent' in Activity Monitor using 165Mb of RAM.


Anyone has any idea what it is?


Thanks in advance

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 12:54 PM

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Posted on Aug 1, 2017 3:32 PM

Open Macintosh HD then click Users and Your Home Folder then after *hold down Command and press together the two keys Shift and . (period key). You should see secret folders that Apple hides for a cleaner look. If you don't then try rapidly pressing the Shift key and period key while holding down Command. You should now see a folder containers. Click the folder containers. This is where the com. folders should be. That is what I know.


User uploaded file


*For some Mac Users this doesn't work. If you're one of them open Terminal and type defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES close Terminal and relaunch Finder now the secret folders should be visible. To hide them again type defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO. Ten relaunch finder again and the secret folders should be hidden again.

122 replies

Dec 6, 2013 8:54 AM in response to petermac87

petermac87 wrote:

enarwpg wrote:



Does anyone from Apple ever check these comments? 😕

No. You will need to contact them with feedback



Yeah I would have assumed they would have too, since we are in the "Apple Support Communities".




I just wanted to add another to this thread. I'm running Mavericks on a 27" i7 iMac. This service is constantly hogging Memory. Currently sitting at 371MB.



Cheers,

Rick

Dec 9, 2013 3:19 PM in response to alvarofromm

Ok, I think I solved this problem.


Here's my solution:


1 - Kill "com.apple.IconServicesAgent" using Activity Monitor

2 - In Finder go to "Go to folder" under "Go" menu and paste: ~/Library/Caches/

3 - Delete "com.apple.finder" (save a copy as backup if you want)

4 - Kill Finder


That's it. Let me know if this works for you, it did for me.

Dec 10, 2013 11:57 AM in response to alvarofromm

You can watch what files are being opened with this shell command:


sudo fs_usage -f pathname -w com.apple.IconServicesAgent |grep open


In my case, both VideoLan Client (VLC) and MPlayer were generating icons for the same file, going back and forth in an infinite loop. Uninstalling MPlayer made it stop. Uninstalling VLC probably would have done the same.


This isn't a solution, but it might be a helpful data point if anyone has a Radar or support ticket open on this and is already exploring it with an Apple tech.

Dec 11, 2013 4:20 PM in response to sntaln

"Ok, I think I solved this problem.


Here's my solution:


1 - Kill "com.apple.IconServicesAgent" using Activity Monitor

2 - In Finder go to "Go to folder" under "Go" menu and paste: ~/Library/Caches/

3 - Delete "com.apple.finder" (save a copy as backup if you want)

4 - Kill Finder


That's it. Let me know if this works for you, it did for me."


It has been 3 hours now and com.apple.IconServicesAgent has not gone crazy in my Console and Activity Monitor. I won't believe it is solved until I see it still gone tomorrow (I've thought other things had it fixed but it always came back), but it is looking good. Thanks for this.


Mark

Dec 11, 2013 9:35 PM in response to mdodel

Resetting the preferences to default will not work, meaning . I already tried, first thing in fact. I'm having issues on bothe the 2010 iMac and the 2011 MacBook Pro. The service seems to be buggy, either the icon service or the Finder. Wouldn't be surprised the is was just released alligator ago. Temporary fix is open activity monitor and force kill the process. Then relaunch the finder (not necessary but I do it as a precaution).

Dec 16, 2013 3:33 AM in response to mdodel

I have this same problem, and would like to try your approach, but I don't know how to kill the "com.apple.IconServicesAgent" using Activity Monitor. Can you explain?

Incidentally, com.apple.IconServicesAgent doesn't show when I look for it in Preferences; where is it hidden and how do I find it to delete its prefs, a usual cure for such problems.

I just restarted in recovery mode, repaired permissions, and restarted: immediately the physical memory usage started to climb, from less than 50% to almost the whole 4GB; the largest consumers are virusbarriers, at 450.9 MB, kernal_task at 433.9MB and IconServiceAgent at 317.3. On my old MacBook, running OS 10.7.5, these items don't even show up. Doing little but examining the screen, CPU usage is v. low, so the slowness (spinning beachball) when I start on something serious must be the shuffling the system is doing to create virtual memory.

Clearly Mavericks is not fit for purpose. I would like to go back to Mountain Lion, but don't know what I would lose if I do.

APPLE.COM - WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT THIS PROBLEM?

Dec 16, 2013 11:24 AM in response to mdodel

I tried this on the item "Kernal_task", which is the biggest consumer of memory (447MB!), and got the result reproted above. However, when I did it with 'IconServicesAgent', the action boxes were live and I have successfully removed i. Whether it will be there when i restart remains to be seen. I will try it later, but now I have work to do.

Dec 16, 2013 11:45 AM in response to art Harris

About the worst possible thing you can do is start killing processes at random if you know nothing about their purpose. Kernel task is responsible for handling most of what the operating system is doing in the background. Killing it will crash your system.


If you don't know what it does, leave it alone, even if you think it's using too much memory.

What is com.apple.IconServicesAgent?

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