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alvarofromm Author

Level 1

7 points

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

Top-ranking reply

Spartzky613

Level 1

8 points

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.

*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.

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122 replies

Silizium

Level 1

4 points

Aug 14, 2015 8:54 AM in response to AZPublishing

The Applescript would be:

do shell script "killall -9 com.apple.IconServicesAgent"

and the bash command would be:

sh -c 'killall -9 com.apple.IconServicesAgent'

I kill this **** process every hour with a LaunchControl task.

AZPublishing wrote:

@Magnat What a Great idea for the Apple script.....any chance you can post the applescript code you wrote to do this? I'd love to try it myself.

MaximMn

Level 1

0 points

Oct 11, 2015 3:04 PM in response to kriss13

Thanks kriss13!

I went into System Preferences, the Users & Groups, then the Login Items tab.

I clicked the checkbox next Dropbox and then the minus sign below.

Restarted and lo and behold iconservicesaagent is only using about 9 Mb or memory…before it was 151 Mb.

I don't know if this will make any noticeable difference in how my Mac runs, but I'm glad to not have it tied to my tail!

kriss13 wrote:

"I can confirm tha Dropbox inflated the com.apple.IconServicesAgent to almost 200mb.

Disabled the DB autostart and closed it, restarted and now com.apple.IconServicesAgent is max 15mb.

No CPU spikes either.. all good now."

What is com.apple.IconServicesAgent?