the com.apple.IconServicesAgent process goes over 99% CPU and blocks Finder operations
killing the process with the Activity Monitor things go back to normal
what else could i do to slve this problem?
Mac mini, OS X Mavericks (10.9), Snow Leopard to Mavericks upgrade
This worked for me. The iconservice agent dropped to about 20mg and overall memory usage much better. For anybody who doesn't feel comfortable making changes you don't understand within a terminal session, this should be the first thing you try.
I tried all the fixes mentioned above and several others, all were just temporary solutions. No login items, everything clean, still the problem was there.
Then I got the Idea of how to get the root of the problem, see http://blog.hsoi.com/2014/02/25/my-slow-mac-mavericks-coreservicesd-iconservices agent-and-how-fs_usage-saved-me/comment-page-1/
If you have the same problem and the solutions given in this thread don't work, please run
sudo fs_usage -f pathname -w com.apple.IconServicesAgent | grep open
in the Terminal and post your output here.
For me, XCode seemed to be the problem.
Uninstalled XCode by sudo -r /Applications/XCode.app. Cleared all caches by sudo rm -r /Library/Caches and ~/Library/Caches, then mkdir of the same (don’t know and think that this step is necessary). Reinstalled XCode.
Problem gone.
What am I doing wrong?
Sorry, I missed this post earlier and stumbled here by chance since the problem still exists (Thanks Apple!!)
You are doing everything right, you just need to enter your administator password because you are running a system command and press enter.
Then you need to do whatever causes your problem, e.g. open a Finder and browse to a Folder you haven't opened before and open it.
-> (e.g.)
sir:~ test7$ sudo fs_usage -f pathname -w com.apple.IconServicesAgent | grep open
16:27:41.051318 open F=4 (R_____) /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/MyLibraries/myDocume nts.cannedSearch 0.000008 com.apple.IconSe.47617
16:27:41.051369 open F=4 (R_____) /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/MyLibraries/myDocume nts.cannedSearch/Resources 0.000009 com.apple.IconSe.47617
16:27:41.051435 open F=4 (R_____) /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/MyLibraries/myDocume nts.cannedSearch/Resources/Info.plist 0.000018 com.apple.IconSe.47617
(....)
com.apple.iconservice agent problems mavericks
