iconservicesagent OS Mojave issue

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've got the same problem, 100% agree with you, but unfortunately this process is necessary in order to see the icons properly so our hands and feet are tied...

In my case iconservicesagent process begin to devour GBs of RAM and normally Finder collapses. No matter if I try to access internal or external hard drives, the problem remains the same.

I tried two "solutions" which didn't work for me:

a) Deleting: /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store (you´ll be prompted for your administrator login password). More info.

b) Creating a temporary directory: mkdir ${TMPDIR}/com.apple.IconServices (Mavericks issue) More info.

I hope that Apple will provide a real Mojave solution soon because right now my computer looks like an expensive paperweight and I am not psychologically prepared to go back to the Microsoft Windows World :-(

Same Issue here. Both Macs (MacBook Pro and Mac mini) both with the same issue after installing Mojave. Never had this issue before and haven't installed anything new, on either machine, since Mojave.

The Mac mini is far worse than the MacBook Pro... 99% system resources and iconservicesagent will get to somewhere north of 80GB of memory usage before it seems to fall over and the process starts again. Memory Pressure will stay in the red. Machine is essentially unusable.

The 2017 MacBook Pro will cap at about 60% system resources and iconservicesagent will slowly inch up to 5 GB, or so. Doesn't seem to fall over but makes it impossible to do any work in anything that takes intensive resources (had two powerpoint files open on Friday and it was very slow). Finder is crazy sluggish as well.

I've been a Mac user for about 10 years now and this is the first issue like this I've had... Apple needs to fix this ASAP.

You are absolutely correct, I spent a ton of time adding custom icons to my movie files (which is a very basic and core function to any OS) and am not at all happy about having to delete them. This is a pretty massive bug for such a mature company and OS and is unacceptable to linger even this long. I'm just hoping this gets someone out of the same jam I found myself in thanks to Apple. Get it together, guys.

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.

Same issues here (icon services hogging RAM and CPU) with different cause.

iMac late 2014 24GB RAM 10.14.3

Steps to repeat:

Activating a search (cmd-F) from a Finder window starting from "myiMac" icon and highlight "This Mac",

Select "Other" pulldown tab and use File Size.

After inserting a whatever option-value (in my case was Greater than 9 GB) Finder freezes (although had already found 57 items) and icon services start to eat RAM.

No workaround found yet.

Most people cite the custom icon thing. For me, I had a few custom icons which I reverted back to defaults, but that did not fix the issue. Maybe somehow there is still the memory of them but my external hard drive is all but nonfunctional now -- and there are no visible custom icons anymore on it.

I did have some custom icons, but I removed them and restored default icons, but have still continued to have the problem of others. The files are on an external drive, which as soon as I point Finder to the drive, shows iconservicesagent gradually taking up all RAM and then virtual RAM (up to 93 GB!) and then crashing my Mac. It all started after updating to Mojave. Since the update a couple of weeks ago, my computer can now open files and not freeze the desktop, but iconservicesagent still gradually consumes all RAM until the Mac crashes. So I would say it's a very, very mild improvement for me. And I seem to be the only one on this board who has removed all the custom icons and still has the problem. :(

If I dismount my external hard drive and plug it into another Mac which is still running High Sierra, everything works just fine.

It appears this has been resolved in 10.15, at least as of DP Beta 2. I just wrote up a whole detailed thing about this and my testing, but I accidentally closed out my browser window...so for now just know that it seems to be working fine in 10.15. Hopefully they bring the same fix to 10.14.6, because while 10.14.5 works better, it's still not what it used to be in 10.13 and older.

Let's hope 10.15 stays that way!

I've had this iconservicesagent problem for quite a while, and I think it started with Mojave. But I'll tell you that the problem is NOT confined to custom icons. I have no custom icons and don't want to spend my time making them up. At first, my problem began when I opened dedicated movie folders that were being used as libraries by Plex. At first, it was one library, then the problem spread to all of them, and now the problem has spread yet again to folders of movies that AREN'T libraries for Plex. I recently thought that Plex was making custom icons that sent iconservicesagent into the stratosphere. But then the problem began on non-Plex folders. If I catch it soon enough, I can stop the onslaught of the daemon if I quickly relaunch switch away from the movie folder and to another external hard drive, then relaunch the Finder. But "touching" any movie folder restarts the problem anew.

Here is what Activity Monitor is showing this afternoon. I just opened a window with movie files, and decided to just let the Finder run and see what happens. These shots were snapped without my moving windows, mouse, or anything. I just let the iMac run and watched Activity Monitor. As you can see, iconservicesagent runs up the RAM for a minute or two, then "self-corrects" and diminishes its footprint without prompting. It decrease its footprint to around 2 or 3 GB, then rises again. All the time this is happening, I have a window open with movie files and generic icons showing on the desktop. After I "intervene" and select another external hard drive with no movie files showing, and perform a few "force quits", iconservicesagent retreats and goes back to its normal footprint of 5-6 MB.

As you can see, when I ISA goes nuts, the Finder fails to respond, but becomes active when ISA drops its footprint. Regarding the icons, I get the same effect whether I use "show icon previews" or not. I use no custom icons. When I was using movie files on an external hard drive on my MBP several weeks ago, that computer's ISA would erupt and STAY in the red zone. I attribute this iMac's behavior (from which I took the snaps) to a faster CPU. I might be wrong, but who knows?

So, if any of you have ideas for a fix, I'm open to hearing any. I suspect that this is a bug in Mojave that's born from a conflict between the Finder, Spotlight, and ICA. Just my guess.

Thanks in advance for any assistance or advice.

You are definitely right! Mojave's IconServicesAgent is a bad process. :-( However, fortunately Catalina works perfectly both in my powerful 27" BTO (last 2013) and in my MacBook Pro 13" (mid 2010) with the excellent Catalina patcher; it works better than High Sierra and Mojave :-)