macOS Mojave - iconservicesagent misbehaving again

I had this issue as well since I have a couple hundred movie files with custom file icons (setup using the MovieIcon app). Things became unusable when I opened my Movies folder. I had to go through and remove the custom icons -- this would have taken a long time but I used this script in Terminal to make quick work of it (be sure you cover all the possible file extensions, not just ".mp4")...

find ~/Movies -name "*.mp4" | while read f ; 
do xattr -d com.apple.ResourceFork "$f" ; 
done

What this script is doing is just looping through all files in my "Movies" folder and removing the icon (what MacOS calls "ResourceFork") for each file. Hope this helps!

I got resolution. Yay!

Working with AppleCare and someone at an Apple Store I was able to find a solution.

I put my external USB disk on a High Sierra Mac at the store and it had no trouble with the custom icon which had been set on a High Sierra Mac. I was able to “cut” the icon cleanly.

From that point forward the drive was fine on my Mojave Mac. I did the same thing later on my two other problematic drives using a friend’s High Sierra Mac and then they were fine too.

An alternative to using another computer would be to remove the icons through Terminal. This code will run through all the files in a folder or external HD and remove only the custom icons (what MacOS calls "ResourceFork"). This code will look for all ".mp4" files and remove the icons -- you would have to do this for any file extension where you want icons removed.

find "/Volumes/EXT HD NAME" -name "*.mp4" | while read f ; do xattr -d com.apple.ResourceFork "$f" ; done

As a workaround to the bug, your goal is to remove the custom icons. The trouble is you have the problem at the time you’re trying to resolve it. And I think even if you do, the iconservicesagent is messed up already and can’t properly complete the cut.

For me, the files with custom icons were on an external drive and I was able to cut them from the files by mounting the drive on a friend’s or Apple Store’s High Sierra Mac.

I dragged the drive onto the Terminal window and that gave me the precise file path. I did not need the ""s. And IT WORKED...it looks very sad without all of the artwork I spent so much time pasting into place, but at least the videos now run smoothly. I have a copy of the drive with the icons, and assuming Apple fixes this at some point in the future, I'll copy that backup back onto my external drive. Thank you - you helped me as Apple Support could not!

My system is a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015).

initially it was of course the rediculously poor performance after connecting an external drive. That led me to see the reduculously high disk usage. Eventually I noticed the rediculously high memory usage and saw that was coming from the iconservicesagent process. It started when I installed Mojave when it was released.

FWIW, I only have the problem when I connect an external drive. It just so happens that I have custom icons on the drives and things within the drives, so may well be that it’s because of the custom icons.

It therefore doesn’t brick my Mac unless I connect one of my external drives, which I generally do.

Please fix this and release as soon as possible. I can so easily reproduce this problem. No system process should brick my system.

Same problem. I had recently upgraded to Mojave from El Capitan and thought that my external HDD with all my film collection was failing. I bought a new HDD immediately, but I realised too late that iconservicesagent was the problem.

Waste of 80€.

Thanks Apple.

As a temporary workaround I'm going to be doing all my HDD related operations from the terminal.

Hey, The Popper, I think for that to work on an external drive, you'd need to modify the "find ~/Movies" portion.

Try this (where you change EXT HD NAME to whatever your hard drive name is -- if you don't know, open Disk Utility and it will list it there)...

find "/Volumes/EXT HD NAME" -name "*.mp4" | while read f ; 
do xattr -d com.apple.ResourceFork "$f" ; 
done

Interesting, then it seems like it's not specific to the application I used (MovieIcon) and since you did it the manual way, it looks like MacOS is busted when it comes to large files and the iconserviceagent service running. Hope they fix this!

I called Apple, they send this issue to their developers.

The support staff suggested to me, to send an macOS Mojave issue-feedback on: www.apple.com/feedback

Please to all: Send a feedback to Apple, to urgent this issue-solving.

Refer to this thread and maybe to my case: 100689860997 or (better) open a new case.

I've been pulling my hair out over the exact same problem, and your solution looks to be exactly what I was looking for. I have a HUGE favor to ask, as I'm not as versed in Terminal as you are. All of my movies are on an external drive. How would I alter your Terminal input to reflect that external drive? Thank you so much in advance.

Thank you, Brendan. I assume the "" around the external hard drive name should not be included? And, are the returns after the semi-colons part of the entry? Or is that just how it formatted when you entered it?

Thanks again.

Outstanding! So glad my experience could be some help. I lost all my artwork too so that's a bummer. What application were you using to add the icons? Maybe there's a common thread here that I can avoid going forward.

No application. I just found them on the web, downloaded to my desktop, opened in Preview, chose "select all" and "copy", and then using "Get Info" pasted them in place. Since High Sierra, I had to take a further step and bring into Photoshop and make the canvas width the same as the height - otherwise, the icons were squished.

Hi,

I've got the same issue. My 2017 iMac with 16GB RAM 500GB SSD and Radeon 580 freeze when loading an folder within custom fileicons. I've tried to disabled firewall, start in save mode, restart Finder - but the issue still occurs.

Is there any workaround, like restart database, copy icon-database from High Sierra mac?

Thanks a lot - and Apple please: Solve this bug.