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)

So I've been going to the movie folders and clicking on the View Options on the folders, and unchecking "Show icon preview" box. It takes a few minutes to clear ISA with force quits after it starts to go bonkers, but using only generic icons for all movies is what seems to work when ISA dies down to a normal footprint. If you check the "Show icon preview" box and then look at the "Get Info" window on each icon, you will notice that the SIZE of the icon is consistent with the dimensions of the actual film. So if you have a film that's 720p or 1080p, then those are the dimensions of the preview icon. Previously, I didn't realize that using the oversized preview icons was, in essence, using a "custom icon" that so many posters have referenced. I suspect that, with hundreds of oversized icons to manage, ISA gets overworked and takes over RAM. If all of this is accurate and I'm on to something that's valid (?), I'd venture a guess that an Apple programmer should be able to reduce the size of the preview icon to the size of the generic icon within the OS and alleviate the problem. That doesn't seem like a major task to me, but hey, I'm not a programmer.

I've bought 4 new Mac mini - same problem from the first day.

Iconseverviceagent (ISA) takes >100% CPU (all other processes are very, very slow) and - at all- more than 120GB RAM (100GB Swap and more than 20GB RAM).

Had have a consultation with my local Mac dealer and we fixed the problem:

No more images created by disk utility! No new one and also not older one (from my Power Mac with 10.6.8).t

Before I had have 2 big images - one with 1TB and one with 3TB. Both encrypted.

Now I'm keeping my datas in a normal folder - no more problems with ISA, but now my critical datas are not sure. I don't like to use "FileVault" for the whole hard disk, encrypted images were the better solution for many years. I've mounted the images only if I need the datas. All other datas need not such a security.

Don't ask me why Mac OS offer this capabilities if this don't work or - even much worse - makes it impossible to do other work with my brand-new Macs. I've created a new encrypted image and ISA started his stampede.

I hope, Apple will have a better solution next time.

Hi 13rendan! You can see this my post of May 30 2019:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8559574?answerId=250744164022#250744164022

You can open the Terminal and you can substitute the phrase "INSERT-PATH-NAME-HERE" in this mode:

1- Open Terminal and write:

find 

(and verify that exist a space after "find " otherwise create it)

2- With the mouse, drags in Terminal the folder or the Disk where you want to remove the customized icons

3- REMOVE the space after the path sign "/" (using Backspace or Delete key)

4- Copy end paste exactly:

* | while read f ; 
do xattr -d com.apple.ResourceFork "$f" ; 
done

5- Press Enter key

Note: My first suggestion is that you migrate to last Catalina beta version that solved this problem very well.

If your Mac is obsolete... you can verify if it support the "macOS Catalina patcher" to install Catalina. You can find the patcher site with Google, but attention to go to original site of the honest Developer dosdude1. With the MacBook Pro mid 2010 of my daughters the patcher (1.0.6 version) works well and is very simple to apply.

The EXAMPLE of the complete command is:

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

One other approach that works:

1) Copy the directories with the offending custom icons to a non-Mac formatted drive (I used an exFAT SSD).

2) Replace the original directories with the ones you copied to the non-Mac formatted drive.

That's it. All custom icons get ditched in the process.

Let me also express my utter despair that this Mojave OS has destroyed a wonderfully helpful part of my daily workflow- recognizing files by their custom icons. The ability to make these customizations lead me to Apple in the first place. That Apple now tanks my computer (iconserviceagent) through the very reason I began using their OS sends a telling message.

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.

Okay. I've found something that, although it doesn't solve the fundamental problem with iconservicesagent, it can lessen the symptom:

This issue only affects movie files and, presumably icons. I have the Activity Monitor sitting in a corner of my screen, and I've been watching what happens to our favorite daemon. When I open or select the folder containing the movie files, iconservicesagent takes over and runs up the RAM. So yesterday, I opened did a large transfer of movie files from one external hard drive to another (I've been having separate problems with one of the drives). ISA started to go wild, as predicted. Then, in the Finder window, I selected another directory. Doing so took the Finder's "attention" away from the movie folder while the copying continued. So while the copying was going on in the background, I force quit ISA a few times, then it stopped and settled down into its rightful place near the bottom of the activity list. It stayed there for HOURS. I tried this again with the same result. So... what I learned is that if the target movie files (I'm assuming that certain icons are giving ISA some fits, but I've got hundreds of movie files, none of which have "custom icons") are not visible on the screen, ISA goes about doing other tasks, and the Finder ignores what's not visible. Weird. So I copied around 1.4 TB of movie files without any interruptions from Finder crashes or anything else.

No, it's not a software solution. ISA is still an undisciplined toddler that throws fits when it gets upset. But take away the sight of those movie icons from the Finder, and it doesn't react to what it doesn't see.

And thank you all for your input once again. I've got a feeling that the fundamental issue will be there for as long as Mojave is in play, and for as long as Apple's software engineers don't attack the issue. I'd also venture a guess that, since this issue has been going on since before Mojave, as the Discussion forums attest, it's likely that it will continue into the Catalina era. I'd be wonderfully surprised if the issue dissolves after Mojave.

Thank you for that detailed examination of the problem. I have thousands of custom icons for my movie files that I created from the title page of each movie. Yes I’m crazy, but I’m also retired so have time to do this. If I use Path Finder to uncheck the “Custom Icon” info box, it hides the icon without deleting it from the resource fork. ISA then gets quiet, though it still has to do some work to display the default icon for each movie, so it isn’t perfect. Anyway, using Path Finder I can recheck “Custom Icon” and restore the icon instantly, so can see if there are any improvements to the operation of ISA. I’m looking forward to trying Catalina and hope it solves this ridiculous problem.

I'd go back to High Sierra but my movie computer is a new Mac mini that can only run Mojave!

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.

IconServicesAgent has eaten up all 16 GB of RAM and another 4 of VM at times. Someone on another forum wrote a Terminal command that kills ISA every three seconds. ISA doesn't take over RAM if you do this, but the Finder then goes in and out of freezes. Not a good solution. But here it is if you can find no other way of handling the issue:

while : ; do PID="$(ps -fe | grep '/System/Library/CoreServices/iconservicesagent' | egrep -v '^\s+0\s+' | awk '{print $2}')"; if [ -n "$PID" ] ; then kill -9 $PID; echo "$PID killed"; fi; sleep 3; done

I wrote earlier today that, if you have Activity Monitor opened and watching the Memory tab, and your Finder points to a movie folder (I have a handful), you can watch ISA take over RAM. What I've done is immediately exit the Finder window, force Quit ISA, then relaunch Finder, all in quick succession. The ISA problem then vanishes so that you can perform other functions as normal. But if I open up another movie folder, the problem repeats.

Continued:

It's still not a perfect solution, as I still get ISA problems, but there is a level of responsiveness when I uncheck the preview box. There appears to be some residual effect. For instance, if I open a movie folder with all generic icons, ISA will respond with increased RAM usage, but will retreat after a handful of force quits. I also notice that, within the movie folders, if the Finder draws a BLANK icon, and I highlight it, ISA's footprint goes way up until I can force quit a number of times, use the get info box, and designate a generic icon. Then ISA goes back to normal. Weird. But I think I'm heading in the right direction for a solution, even though this appears to be a PROGRAMMING ISSUE.