iconservicesagent OS Mojave issue

I had this problem. After working on it for the better of two weeks, I cleared the "Icon Services caches" using Cocktail 12.2.

Click on the "Files" icon. For "Choose caches" choose User. Click on the Options button and sure that Icon Services caches is selected. Then click Clear.

It was taking a long time, so I went to bed. When I woke up, no more iconservicesagent problem.

You can try to delete the Icons caches that exists in /Library/Caches/

Run Terminal and digit or copy&paste:

sudo rm -rfv /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store; sudo find /private/var/folders/ \( -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -or -name com.apple.iconservices \) -exec rm -rfv {} \; ; sleep 3;sudo touch /Applications/* ; killall Dock; killall Finder

Excuse me because I writing from my iPhone and don’t permitted to insert as Code... (or I don’ t know a mode)

I'm sorry to disappoint you ... Your solution is only temporary ... After you've cleared the cache, Mojave has rebuilt the icon cache overnight and then the Finder can quickly open the folder. But then, continuing to use Mojave, the problem will be repeated again and again and you'll have to wait longer or... other nights to be able to view the folder contents with many large files and many custom icons. The problem is greater with external disks.

The only real solution must provide Apple, restoring the correct operation of the Resource Fork. In this regard, the solution provided by another user to delete the Resource fork through the Terminal is a permanent solution valid but, unfortunately, eliminating the Resource Fork, you delete the previews of images, videos, PDFs and other files created by Finder and then it is almost impossible to get them back. To do this, in some cases, you can use an application like GraphicConverter, select all the photos and with the right mouse choose to rebuild the EXIF ​​Preview.

Although I do not recommend doing so, however, I tell you the command to copy in Terminal to solve the problem of opening folders to those of you who fail with other methods. Remember to replace the correct path name of the folders that interest you instead of 'INSERT-PATH-NAME-HERE'. Keep in mind that the command also deletes the Resource Fork sub-folders!

find INSERT-PATH-NAME-HERE/* | while read f ; 
do xattr -d com.apple.ResourceFork "$f" ; 
done

I had the same problem. Iconserviceagent take all the memory and crash the Finder.

I delete the custom icon of all my Apple Disk Image Files (.dmg).

I restart.

Everything are fine now.

Hope this can help you.

Hi

Mac mini (Late 2014)

2,6 GHz Intel Core i5

I had the same problerm. I read all the articles I found but no proposed solution worked. I have many external drives with movie files, especially with the mkv extension. I noticed that it was starting to suck memory when scrolling I arrived to a movie that I named War.Inc. I rename the file removing the dot like War Inc and noticed that the problem was now solved on my computer.

Hope this was helpful.

I'm pleased to say that Mojave 11.14.4 has finally solved the "iconservicesagent" problem with custom icons. It's still not as fast as High Sierra, especially with HD movie files, but the custom icons do appear and display without stopping the entire computer.

I have one very large DMG file that had a custom icon, and I remember that it suffered from the same ailment as movie files only way worse. At least with the movies, the Mac would *eventually* stop beachballing and cough up the icon. With the DMG, no. I finally had to go in via terminal and delete its resource fork so it would behave normally. I don't know if the difference was the DMG's much larger file size (compared to a typical movie), the fact that the DMG was encrypted, or both, or neither, or what. But yeah the iconservicesagent thing was way more problematic with disk images, so it doesn't surprise me that this update may yet leave DMGs in the lurch, since it *barely* solves the issue as it related to movies.

I'm not going to tell you to blow away your custom icons via terminal, because yeah, the Mac should work right and this update indicates the problem is very much on Apple's radar so it probably eventually will work right. But if you need to access the data on your disk images today (as opposed to next month or six months from now), you may need to do just that. Best of luck to you.

I had the same issue. All began with me installing Mojave. First I tried buying more memory. But iconsevicesagent just consumed the extra memory plus tons of virtual memory. On my 32 GB RAM iMac, it takes up 110 GB of RAM at times! But it only seems to happen after I point the Finder window to my external hard drive. I read other posts that also said the problem an external hard drive.

Next I tried changing the few custom icons I had within that external hard drive back to default. Didn't help. Then I removed all the custom icons from my iMac internal hard drive. No help.

If I plug my external hard drive into my MacBook Pro, it works fine. I have not upgraded its OS yet and is still running High Sierra. If I use its Finder to access the files on the external hard drive, iconservicesagent behaves normally.

Wish I could uninstall Mojave, but I do not have a HS backup, and I hear that it's now risky to try to go back. So I'm stuck not being able to use my external hard drive much on my main computer until hopefully Apple releases some new OS fix.

Holy ****!

You just saved me from buying a new $3000 MBP. My finder went insane when accessing a SD card on my old but reliable MBP mid 2009. The problematic files were large > 2 GB disk image files.

There were several files with custom icons or special file flags. I used TinkerTool System 6“ to remove all flags on all files on the SD card and kernel_task / iconservicesagent shut the ******* and I can use my MBP again.

Thank you so much!

You can delete the Resource Fork of this folder with a Terminal command, as indicated in precedent messages.

I copy here to help you :-)

The only real solution must provide Apple, restoring the correct operation of the Resource Fork. In this regard, the solution provided by another user to delete the Resource Fork through the Terminal is a permanent solution valid but, unfortunately, eliminating the Resource Fork, you delete the previews of images, videos, PDFs and other files created by Finder and then it is almost impossible to get them back. To do this, in some cases, you can use an application like GraphicConverter, select all the photos and with the right mouse choose to rebuild the EXIF ​​Preview.

Although I do not recommend doing so, however, I tell you the command to copy in Terminal to solve the problem of opening folders to those of you who fail with other methods. Remember to replace the correct path name of the folders that interest you instead of 'INSERT-PATH-NAME-HERE'. Keep in mind that the command also deletes the Resource Fork sub-folders!

find INSERT-PATH-NAME-HERE/* | while read f ; 
do xattr -d com.apple.ResourceFork "$f" ; 
done

Actually, in my case, the Penguin is correct (though the victory dance is premature). I feel sorry that, for whatever reason, Dott. Enzo_Vincenzo still has the problem after applying the upgrade. The overall problem is not completely fixed by the update, but now when I open a folder full of movies with custom icons there is no beachball, I can select-move-copy files, most importantly I can immediately open a movie and play it. So the entire computer being hogtied got fixed. What did NOT get fixed is the Mac's ability to immediately display all the custom icons, all at once, upon opening the folder - like in High Sierra (and every other Mac OS before Mohave). On my 4.2 GHz core i7 iMac the generic movie icons change into the custom icons one at a time, about one per second. So if you have a lot of movies in the folder it will take an unacceptably long time before you can see them all. This is still terrible performance, and the Apple coders responsible for this part of the OS should not feel like they licked it with Mojave 11.14.4. Rather they should remain embarrassed and should be still working feverishly to restore full, proper functionality to something so basic to the Finder.

It looks like what some others have said, 10.14.4 partially resolves the issue for me. I say partial, because opening a directory with a lot of custom icons no longer freezes up the Finder and my systems, but it takes a few minutes while the system retrieves and displays the icons. I'm sure this is a temporary fix until they fully resolve the issue. My guess is iconservicesagent is probably reading the data in real time instead of reading from a cache.

I know OS development is a large and complicated task with many parts and many hands, but this shouldn't have gone out like this. It shows that Apple is rushing to get new systems out, that they're not doing proper testing, they don't care about certain segments of their user base, or a combination of these. I feel that yearly OS cycles have been devastating to Apple's overall quality. New OSes are released at a predetermined date, instead of when they're ready. Professionally, I don't let me end users update to a new system until the 10.XX.2 or 10.XX.3 release, which is a good 3-5 months after the system is release, almost half is lifetime. Maybe yearly cycle works for phones, but not for full fledge computers.

Sorry to hear that. I was experimenting today, opened a folder with a few hundred custom icons, it took maybe 5-10 minutes for the system to display all the custom icons. In that time, iconservicesagent ran up about 8.5GB of RAM. For me, this wasn't horrible because I have a Mac Pro with 64GB of RAM, but I imagine my laptop with 16GB would have been completely useable. Are you on a computer with 16GB or less?

I have a powerful 27” iMac BTO, purchased may 2014 with i7 CPU, 24 GB of RAM, the top graphics card, etc. So, the IconServicesAgent issue exists in all Mac with macOS Mojave of my family or my friends, news or olds Mac; for example: MacBook Pro 2017, MacBook Air 2016, iMac...

But the strange thing is this: I also have a MacBook Pro 13", mid 2010, with 16 GB RAM and a good SSD 512 MB, in which I installed Mojave 10.14.4 using Mojave Patcher (of dosdude). Strangely, the behavior with Folders containing many large files with custom icons is identical also in this Mac and the Finder freezes and restart only a little slower and almost equal to my powerful 2014 iMac.

I wonder, therefore, if the problem is really iconservicesagent or if, instead, the issue is in the Finder...

Perhaps (it’ a my idea) the Folder with the icons cache should not have been in the /Library/Cache/, but in the User_Home/Library/Cache or in the User cache in /var/folders/.

In fact, it makes no sense to use the root/Library, instead of /Users/Home/Library or /private/var/folders/user _cache_folders in 0, C, T, considering that each User accesses different folders and also considering Sandbox and ACL permissions... So! Perhaps the Finder is forced to go crazy and therefore slows down. :-(

I am seeing the iconservicesagent problem, also, high CPU and RAM usage, macOS 10.14.3 (including with security update). Here is an Activity Monitor screenshot, showing the problem with Memory:

Here is one showing high CPU:

Finder becomes pretty slow, as do other things. If I kill it, it goes away for a bit, but generally comes back.