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Luis_Mercado Author

Level 1

46 points

Guide: How to solve Yosemite memory leaks and CPU usage

I post this hoping to help those users who, like me, are experiencing high CPU usage and massive memory leaking with OS X core services and apps, leading to slow performance and battery drain.

I've tried everything mentioned, but found the right combination of steps to follow. I've tried this with seven different Apple computers, including mine, and has worked well so far. I applied this method yesterday to give these process a 24 hour window to fail again, so far everything good.

First step: disconnect any external or secondary monitors, if any is present. The video memory allocation leak can also happen if you have a system with an integrated card, like Intel, with no external monitors attached.

Second step: Shut down your machine and enter Safe Mode (press shift once you turn on your computer again, more info below). Once you're there, fix your disk permissions.

Guide of how to access Safe Mode: OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?

Third step: From Safe Mode turn off your machine again and reset your System Management Controller (SMC). There are different methods, depending on machine, to do this. To know what method applies to yours read the following guide.

Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

Fourth step: Once your machine completes a full boot after resetting the SMC turn it off again and reset your PRAM (THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP, BUT THE PREVIOUS ONES ARE ESSENTIAL FOR THIS ONE TO WORK). The PRAM stores small bits of data that indicate our Apple computer how to interact with the devices connected to it, including monitors and video cards. It also affects software.

To reset it you should hold the OPTION, COMMAND, P and R keys in your keyboard immediately after turning on your machine again.You'll hear the start up chime, continue pressing the keys until the machine boots and the chime starts A SECOND TIME, then release. IF YOUR YOSEMITE INSTALLATION LOCKS UP AT A BLACK SCREEN AFTER THIS, DONT PANIC! It's normal, just turn off your computer and let it boot again.

More info about PRAM: OS X Mavericks: Reset your computer’s PRAM

Voila, reconnect your external displays and enjoy your system.

Message was edited by: Luis_Mercado

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 23, 2014 10:45 AM

557 replies

Yuck9

Level 1

4 points

Dec 1, 2014 10:10 PM in response to MadMacs0

Not quite. After you close all apps, The mem does not come back. I saw less then a gb come back so where are the other 3-4gb ?

You may like the OS. My only complant ? Why are you here ? To defend ? There are so many things wrong, I can't keep up. No thanks. And with 22 plus pages I'm not alone. But keep tweeking this setting and that setting. Who knows, it may work. lol

MadMacs0

Level 5

5,227 points

Dec 1, 2014 11:02 PM in response to Yuck9

Yuck9 wrote:

Not quite. After you close all apps, The mem does not come back. I saw less then a gb come back so where are the other 3-4gb ?

It's called Application Cache and it's there to make re-launching the app faster. It's the first to go when more RAM is needed and compression can't keep up.

You may like the OS. My only complant ? Why are you here ? To defend ? There are so many things wrong, I can't keep up.

Not at all, my production machine is still Mavericks which I do prefer over Mountain Lion and unless something comes along to push me to Yosemite I think I'll stay where I am.

I'm only here to help with understanding and wouldn't begin to try and defend anything to you. I just want to make sure you reject it for the right reasons. RAM use should not be one of them.

With Activity Monitor open to Memory just watch the MEMORY PRESSURE graph at the bottom. Here's how Apple explains it:

Green: Memory resources are available.
Yellow: Memory resources are still available but are being tasked by memory-management processes, such as compression.
Red: Memory resources are depleted, and OS X is using your startup drive for memory. To make more RAM available, you can quit one or more apps or install more RAM. This is the most important indicator that your Mac may need more RAM.

For an independent review of this new Memory Management system introduced with Mavericks see the OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The Ars Technica Review -- Compressed Memory.

Yuck9

Level 1

4 points

Dec 1, 2014 11:52 PM in response to MadMacs0

So let's see. Not using it but defending it. Got it. So all the whiners are just whiners huh. This is all in our heads guys.

Not anything wrong. LMAO

Dec 2, 2014 12:17 AM in response to Luis_Mercado

Hi there,

Thanks for helping out, though it did not help me out.

Dec 2, 2014 2:14 AM in response to ThomasKilian

Today I got feedback from my bug report: They were not able to reproduce the issue. However, I get 10% CPU eaten away when animating an icon. I ran the App also under 10.7.5 (I don't have Mavericks any more but I'm sure it's the same there) and there the CPU went up exactly 0% (according to activity monitor). I'll try to go back to Mavericks.

Another observation: to please my aged eyes I often use magnification via Ctrl-scroll. In former OS X this worked very smoothly but with Y. this flows like molasses.

Dec 2, 2014 7:12 AM in response to Luis_Mercado

I saw someone mention a mailbox rebuild helped. I simply quit out of Mac Mail and my WindowServer CPU immediately jumped from 60% down to 3%. Once I reopened Mail, it jumped back up a little to about 15%, bouncing around between 10% and 15%. Although I try my best to keep the number of Mail Windows open to a minimum, I have to confess that it gets out of control. For what it's worth, Mail is displayed on my second monitor, a very old 30" Cinema Display (I've read on this thread about secondary monitors being part of the problem).

I had a Mail utility called Attachment Tamer installed, but it is incompatible with Yosemite. I get an error message whenever I startup Mail, but haven't figured out a way to de-install it, although I doubt that is part of the problem. If the WindowServer usage starts creeping up (I say if, but I suspect it is when) I might try the Mailbox rebuild, or simply quit Mail and relaunch.

Hope this helps.

Dec 2, 2014 7:59 AM in response to ThomasKilian

I am sure you did tell the engineers about how many people are reporting this issue.

I experience the same problem. I use memory clean to monitor the memory and even with no apps open and no activity the reported free memory steadily (and speedily) winds down.

Dec 2, 2014 10:06 AM in response to LupoBello

Sure. I included a link to this thread.

Dec 5, 2014 1:52 PM in response to Luis_Mercado

Worked perfectly, system performance is now fantastic. Kicking myself that I didn't think about zapping the SMC and PRAM.

Thank you Luis Mercado.

earworm

Level 1

0 points

Dec 5, 2014 3:10 PM in response to Luis_Mercado

So my fan's been acting up and I have caught a process called DesktopServicesHelper that will be up at 99+ %CPU and I wondered if anyone else had encountered this and/or if these steps solved their issue! WindowServer has not, so far, been jumping very high on me.

Also, how crucial is it to enter Safe Mode *first* and then proceed with the SMC and PRAM resets? I contacted Apple about the DesktopServicesHelper issue and they sent me basically the same set of instructions, except in their version I am told to reset SMC and PRAM first, and then go into Safe Mode to create a new user blahblah to see if the issue occurs there.

The funny thing with the DesktopServicesHelper thing is that when I check Activity Monitor and see it, it only continues to run for another minute or so and then disappears from the list of processes completely.

Anyway, going to try out these steps one way or another, hopefully it solves the fan running!