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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

Mar 3, 2014 8:46 AM in response to Magnat

Really don't think it's a good idea to just go killing processes — particularly system processes — even if they do suck up a lot of RAM. That's a good way to end up with an unstable system.


On my end, it looks as though eliminating that 66 GB zip archive didn't do the trick, at least not as of this morning; iconServicesAgent is up to 250 MB. Too bad — it almost made sense, since Spotlight (for instance) indexes zip archive contents. It seemed plausible that iconServicesAgent was trying to do the same.

Mar 19, 2014 12:13 PM in response to alvarofromm

the quota solved it for me.

I am running a osx-server and had the same problem com.apple.IconServicesAgent was using over 100% CPU for serveral month but just for one user-account. The funny thing - this user only uses mail and fileservices and never logged in remote or with shell. Today I saw in the servermanager there was 104MB disc-quota set for him, I put it to 1000MB and since then the problem was gone.

Mar 24, 2014 2:13 AM in response to alvarofromm

I've got the same problem. Read the whole thread and each reply and I've slimmed down my system removing any startup items and aything else running but still have com.apple.IconServicesAgent hogging 121.4Mb of RAM. I've also had some random stuff hapenning to my icons. Particularly an html file I saved on my desktop.


Given the speculation and and solutions that cater for different applications and user scenarios, the only thing left to do is create a new user and test or reinstall the system and install apps 1 by 1 (which I dont have time to do). Who knows what everybody is running on their machines... So the only solution to rule out 3rd party apps is do a clean install in this situation. I think somebody may have done this already anyway and as mentioned by another person on this thread is possibly distructive and will not help to solve the problem.


All this makes me think this is an unresolved system problem. Lets hope Apple have been watching this thread and are looking for the cause of the problem and will either fix the system or notify the developers.

May 16, 2014 3:06 AM in response to alvarofromm

sgginc put me onto part of the solution. It seems this silly service has tight integration with Finder. Whenever I open a network share it starts going balistic and never stops. Force Stop it in Activity monitor and delete all files in "${TMPDIR}/com.apple.IconServices", launch finder visit network share. IconServicesAgent launches again but this time it behaves. Not sure if this is a permanent fix, but so far so good.

May 19, 2014 10:37 AM in response to alvarofromm

I had the hope that the update to Mac OS X 10.9.3 would fix the problem with the com.apple.IconServicesAgent. But unfortunately it seems not to be fixed.


I updated my MacBook Pro to OS X 10.9.3 at the weekend. Today afternoon I noticed that the IconServicesAgent used nearly all of the CPU.


The "${TMPDIR}/com.apple.IconServices" command fixed it for me. It also fixed it two weeks ago and the IconServicesAgent seemed to behave well. But today it went out of order again.


In the console.app I found the messages "com.apple.IconServicesAgent: Failed to write file /var/folders ..." These messages started to occur two minutes after a message containing "process Adobe Photoshop [7636] caught causing excessive wakeups".


Then I got the messages "Adobe Photoshop CS5.1[7636]: Failed to generate image for binding CustomBinding ..." and "com.apple.IconServicesAgent[192]: Failed to write file /var/folders/..." on a rotating basis.


As I used the "${TMPDIR}/com.apple.IconServices" command IconServicesAgent decreased to a CPU usage of 0 %.

What is com.apple.IconServicesAgent?

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