Folder Actions Dispatcher.app using 80% CPU

It gets worse.

Take a look at the memory usage for that service. You may find that it keeps sucking down the RAM.

That's the problem I had. After running for about 6 hours, the service was using 20 GB (yes, GB) of virtual memory, and making the system virtually unusable. In fact, I had to do a hard reboot once since the system wasn't responding at all.

After doing a search of other posts, I found the problem (at least for me). Right-click on any folder in the Finder, and select "Folder Actions Setup...". A dialog will display to select a script to attach to the folder. Just hit Cancel, and you'll be left with a dialog showing what existing folder actions you have set up.

I had several scripts set up on various .../LaunchAgents and .../LaunchDaemons folders. I'm not sure when I did that, but it was probably years ago in an attempt to be notified if some malware attempted to install bad daemons or agents on my system (probably something I read in article somewhere). It looks like there's a problem with Yosemite wherein the service that monitors those things goes a bit wild.

My solution was to simply either uncheck the "Enable Folder Actions" checkbox, and/or delete all of the existing folder actions. That completely solved my problem. No more CPU hog, and more importantly, no more RAM hog. System is humming along just fine.

Let me know how it goes. I'm curious as to whether this is the same problem I was experiencing.

Good to hear!

Apple responded to my bug report and asked me to get some system diagnostics. As part of that, I'm doing a little experimenting.

As far as I can tell, the problem is with the ~/Library/LaunchAgents folder. It looks like there's a plist file getting put in there that is CONSTANTLY getting updated, and it seems associated with the Folder Actions Dispatcher task. You could argue that that would cause a kind of a feedback loop which might explain the problem.

In any case, looks like there's a workaround...

I had the same problem and am using CrashPlan to backup my data files. When Folder Action Dispatcher and CrashPlan ran it took up all of my CPU and before I knew what was going on I had to hard boot my Mac as it would not respond in a timely manner. I I have since disabled Folder Actions and reduced the amount of CPU that CrashPlan uses and so far it looks to be working. I have only had 10.10 for a few days and was getting frustrated with how slow it was on my 2013 Mac Mini Server w/ 8g

Thanks for this info. This has been a very serious problem for me as well. I've also had to turn Folder Actions off as the Folder Actions Dispatcher process would run amok with %CPU and a constant memory usage growth/leak that would eventually crater my system. I also have Folder Actions set up on both of my Launch Agents and Launch Daemons folders (among other Folder Actions I use) to notify me if any changes are ever made there (for system security reasons), as I've been doing on all my Macs since Snow Leopard. I never got any folder change notifications popped up indicating file changes in LaunchAgents though - just the dispatcher running amok since I upgraded to Yosemite.

Did they say which exact plist file in LaunchAgents was the culprit? Might it be possible to edit that plist file directly to resolve the problem?

Should I also try to file a bug report, or should I take it yours was sufficient, and Apple is already aware of this issue and is working on a fix? Hopefully in 10.10.1, as I'd really like to be able to turn my Folder Actions back on. Not sure why this was't caught during Yosemite's beta...

Apple really doesn't seem to provide you any feedback on bugs you submit (at least to my knowledge) 🙂. So, no details as to workarounds, when it might be fixed, etc. They only thing they did was indicate that this was a duplicate bug, so they closed my bug. The original bug number is 18713961, but I don't seem to be able to find more information about it.

As near as I can tell, it's specific to the ~/Library/LaunchAgents folder. It looks like Folder Actions Dispatcher daemon puts a plist file (2 of them actually) in that folder. One of them is constantly getting touched, so that it's date is always current. I surmise that that's creating a feedback loop and causing the CPU and memory issues.

I can alleviate the problem by turning off or removing that specifc folder from the folder actions list. The CPU usage seems to drop to normal after a little bit. The memory usage was still growing, but very slowly. So, while I'm not sure that that totally corrected the issue, I didn't let it go for very long to see how it worked over time.

Hi,

I had 80%-100% CPU for the first half an hour, but now it has calmed down.

In the LaunchAgents folder I found the following plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Label</key>

<string>com.apple.FolderActions.folders</string>

<key>Program</key>

<string>/usr/bin/osascript</string>

<key>ProgramArguments</key>

<array>

<string>osascript</string>

<string>-e</string>

<string>tell application "Folder Actions Dispatcher" to tick</string>

</array>

<key>WatchPaths</key>

<array>

<string>/Users/rwatson/Desktop</string>

</array>

</dict>

</plist>

What is that all about?

Thanks.

1) That plist file looks associated with AppleScript. Looks like it might have to do something with putting a watch on your desktop? I'd leave it be.

2) Do you have any Folder Actions on any LaunchAgent folders?

3) What version of Yosemite are you running?

Thanks...

Just now "upgrading" to Yosemite and after all the installations started getting the "Folder Actions Dispatcher" quitting/crashing/wasting CPU cycles problem. my new copy of the FAD.plist has 14 different folders/locations in the WatchPaths list!. All LaunchAgents and Daemons in all three Libraries plus Internet Plug-ins in a couple of them. One actually has the entire Library folder on the root directory! No wonder the Dispatcher is running like crazy!

My main problem, however, is that there seems no "Folder Actions" item of any type in any Services menu! I've not tried a Restart since the install. I'm about ready to stop Time Machine making the first back up so I can further trouble-shoot this. Wishing I'd waited another couple of months to "upgrade!" 😝

I'm not sure this will help or not, but one thing I've found is that selecting the menu item Finder > Services > Folder Actions Setup... ONLY works if you have a folder currently selected in the Finder. This might explain why you're not seeing anything.

If you want to "force" the list of Folder Actions to display, right-click on any folder and select Folder Actions Setup. It will display a dialog showing scripts that can be applied. Just hit Cancel. You'll be left with the Folder Actions Setup showing all of your folder actions currently in place.

After letting my machine run over the weekend, I'm seeing that this issue is solved with 10.10.2 (at least for me). What I did was:

• Turned on Folder Actions for 3 different LaunchAgents areas and 2 different LaunchDaemons areas (e.g. local, system).
• Let the system run over the weekend (over 100 hours all told)
• The Folder Actions Dispatcher process is no longer chewing up gobs of memory. It is using some (I'm seeing it go roughly between 40 and 140 MB). That's a little more than I would have thought for such a simple task, but it's by no means stressing the system.
• The Folder Actions Dispatcher process is no longer chewing up CPU.

This is far different that what was seen under 10.10.1 with the same test. Under 10.10.1 I would see Folder Actions Dispatcher continue to grab RAM over time into the several GB range, then drop down, then work it's way back up...continually. The CPU usage would also periodically spike up.

So, from my POV, this seems to have been addressed.

I'm having similar problems still even with 10.10.2 except mine would just spike up to 80%-92%, stay there for a few seconds, and then drop down to virtually nothing. It was just continuously go through this loop. And I'm assuming that's what was causing my mac to be sluggish and to heat up as if it'd been on for days or something when it'd been on for maybe 30 minutes.
I finally just disabled Folder Actions. And now my macs running a thousand times smoother, I can tell it isn't struggling to accomplish simple things anymore, and right after I disabled folder actions the temperature dropped noticeably in a minute.
To be honest I'm not sure how important folder actions are, I'm doing as much research as I can but you only get so far so fast.

The root cause for my not seeing "Folder Actions Setup..." was that I failed to see it in the Keyboard Pref Panel under the Files & Folders list! DOH! I finally looked again and found it yesterday. Not sure why it was not selected, perhaps that's the default?! 😕

While that item is now in the contextual menu (when appropriate), when I use it, the Folder Actions window appears, but empty. I assume that is because the folder I happened to select has no Folder Actions already applied. The 'Enabled' check box is UN-checked. Simply opening that window gets me the spinning pizza and eventually a "System Events quit unexpectedly." window. (I wonder what kind of window comes up when something 'crashes' EXPECTEDLY?! LOL! But I'm not worrying about this until I confirm what I think was originally causing the "Dispatcher" crashes (which is NOT happening now). I had a very old Pref Panel (last updated in 2008!) that doesn't work well with Yosemite! WOW! 😮 Amazingly, it had worked all the way through to Mavericks! Of course, there may be something else involved, but I'm taking this restoration one item at a time. 😉

What you are looking at is a plist basically telling AppleScript (or the System) what folders should be checked for changes. This is simply my opinion, it's not information I found anywhere!

You have only one item, your Desktop, which is really just a specialized folder. My plist had 14 items! I commented out four of them and moved some other files, also. That stopped the 'Dispatcher' crashes and cpu hogging, but I am restoring things one item at a time to see if I can narrow down the real cause. However, DragonDave seems to have 'fixed' his problem by simply letting things run over a weekend! That's rather unusual and doesn't really explain what's going on, IMHO. 😕 Of course, if it's working, don't fix it! 😝

I wonder if enabled folder actions even work on Yosemite then?

Well, not quite. I didn't "fix" things by letting it run over the weekend. That was to simply test that the update to 10.10.2 actually fixed the issue I was seeing.

So, to reiterate, I was able to cause the problem to occur by turning on Folder Actions for certain folders. I first noticed this problem with 10.10.0, and it persisted into 10.10.1. However, the problem seems to have fixed with 10.10.2 (for me at least).

My problem was caused by an apparent conflict with Folder Actions and a very specific folder (~/Library/LaunchAgents). It looked like Folder Actions was placing a plist file there and constantly "touching" it (constantly changing the modification date), resulting in what seemed like a feedback loop which chewed up RAM and CPU (the RAM was the biggest headache). This problem seems to have been fixed by upgrading to 10.10.2.

That's not to say there might not be other issues that Folder Actions has with other folders. You could try the tact I did originally, which was to turn off all of the Folder Actions individually, then turn them back on one-by-one to see which one causes the headache.