iconservicesagent OS Mojave issue

1000% agree... What really is MOST irritating is that apart from this one issue Mojave seems be otherwise totally fine (Apart from Microphones not appearing is the Menu Bar Sound Menu - which can be fixed with 3rd party AudioSwitcher). The problem too it seems only seems to affect Custom Icons (although I could be wrong there too) but effectively, like yourself I have rather a large Video/Music Library on an External USB 3 drive and even after opening folders etc to let each load individually and populate the cache, once I disconnect and or restart the machine it all goes to hades.

As of the time of really here we're now on to 10.14.3 and this issue still persists. I'm quite sure Apple are only too aware of the problem but have done sea to resolve the issue.... I'm just wondering if the team working on this area are ex Microsoft refugees,,,,, only logical explanation for such total incompetence! I really hope Apple haven't lowered their standards to emulate such whales as the aforementioned of the likes of Corel who "acquire" perfectly good products and then destroy them (PSP for one) while charging premium for them. I believe Corel Graphics Suite is now finally back on Mac... but how long until it fails? With no support it's as good as flushing your bitcoin down the Swilly!

Thank you for this update. I've been holding off on updating Mojave for many reasons, one being information regarding custom folder/file icon functionality. It's baffling how a new OS manages to go backward in regards to simple basic functionality. With that being said, do you know how to change file previews for .mp4, .mov extensions from previewing the actual movie file (pressing play) to what it was in High Sierra having an image/icon like every other file?

Perfect, JoeCunnigham, for movie or app icons it's as you say. However I have some folders with many backup .DMG files many large, all with customized icons and it is these folders that cause a serious freezing in Finder. If I haven't yet opened these folders and, for example, I open a window with Disk Utility, maybe because I need to convert a .DMG to modify, the Finder hangs for a long time and often I have to restart it.

Obviously, I didn't have this problem with the High Sierra and the previous macOS or OS X System...

Dear Joe Cunningham, you are proving to be a very intelligent person, one of those people that Apple would need today, more than ever. You have fully understood well the problem! I specify that my DMG files are not encrypted, but only large, of the order of one or two GB each. Regarding folders that hangs-up the Finder, they generally contain between 50 and 100 "Xxxx.DMG" files. I'm sure if Apple had people like you, among Developers or Consultants, macOS would return to the levels of aesthetic and functional perfection in which it was with Steve Jobs. I'm sure, for example, that you, like me, don't appreciate the ugliness of the Mail.app Preference Panel. So! Do you know that I, despite being a Physician, managed to make the Mail.app Preferences, beautiful, functional, able to adapt to the personalized text in an extended way and able to maintain the uniform panels, passing from one panel to another? It was enough for me to modify only a few files, in a couple of hours. (for example: Mail.app/Contents/Resources/Base.lproj/FontsAndColorsPreferences.nib/keyedobjects.nib). But any feedback sent to Apple, however, was useless. Bye, Vincent

You too say wise things, Rick, like all of us that we come from the precision and elegance to which Apple has accustomed us, since the time of macOS 9 Classic.

Regarding the fact that IconServicesAgent directly read from the "Resource Fork" of files, rather than read from the cache, I can't say but effectively the owner of the /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store folder is "_iconservices" and the privileges (permissions) assigned to "_iconservices" are reading and writing, while admin and everyone read only. (CMD+I over the folder to see). I have also tried to add to permissions the root and wheel read and write privileges and/or the permissions to me and staff, hoping to overcome an eventual bug, but to no avail.

Regarding your expectation of the System versions, better starting from the fifth update release onwards (10.x.5)... once, up to Maverick, it was like that, but not anymore today. I understood this by using the Beta versions and realizing that by now, in the final versions, there are still uglinesses that were once the prerogative of the Beta versions and corrected in the Gold Master Versions; but now, if you've noticed, for example, from Yosemite onwards we had a horrendous Disk Utility that besides having lost many essential functions to those who want to administer their System well (and lost the drag & drop on the Dock icon to create new images, etc.), up to "El Capitan" has continued to cut the names of the Devices! And now we still have the ugly and horrendous Preferences of Mail.app whose panels expand and shrink arbitrarily and above all do not adapt to the custom names of the Accounts and to other spaces in which there is personalized text. I manage many Accounts for work and family and I prefer to indicate custom names by entering the full address. Once, the space for the text of the panels adapted to the contents or I could enlarging the panel, but today it remains fixed and it creates a great uneasiness in me to search among often similar name addresses...

Unfortunately this view that there is a semi solution in Mojave latest (10.14.4) is not happening in my experience

Iconservicesagent keeps runinng up to Gb os memory consumption climbing continuously

The only solution is to reboot the Mac to reset everything but the problem recurs. Yesterday climbed to >10Gb before reboot.

This is debilitating and crushes my Mac making it unusable

Just wanted to put another frustrated voice into this convo. I can confirm that with the 10.14.4 update that everything works relatively fine other than it taking 5-10 minutes for all of the custom icons to load. Looking at the activity monitor the iconservicesagent still eats up to 10-15 GB but it isn’t crippling my system like it was before. After all the icons load, everything works smoothly. Do you speculate that with them somewhat addressing the issue in this update that in the next one it might be resolved?

Hopefully... but from OS X 10.10 Yosemite until recently, even dragging a file into very crowded folders had become very slow... :-(

Disk Util was corrected about truncated device names, but it remains without useful features for advanced users and without the drag & drop function in the Dock... :-(

and from three or four versions of macOS the Mail.app Preferences continue to still have an interface tipical only for a beta version... :-(

However it is absurd that today the Finder has problems of slowness in some circumstances ... It seems to be back Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, when the Finder often freezed with the colored wheel running, especially if there was another Mac on the LAN.... :-(

I can't believe i am going to ask this but i have to . . . . . . IS APPLE TRYING TO SIMULATE "WINDOWS". I clearly remember the day i threw in the towel on windows. I took my laptop out to the drive way and ran over it multiple times until it was pulverized at the same time I would never own another windows as long as apple is in existence! Am I being hyperbolic? I think not. I just came home after a loooooog shift at the my hospital and wanted to do some shoping on Amazon. My mac mini basically to "F" off and go use some other computer. After much research (as many of us appleaddicts do) I realized that apple "f"d us with installing

"iconservicesagent" making it impossible for my mac mini to be USEFUL. So I ask apple this . . . . . my iphone acts weird whenever you are about to come up with new iphone release. You admitted that you messed with the operating system to "preserver the battery so that iphone owners are not affected by low battery [blah blah blah]". I have to say this . . . . it is almost as bad as breaking up with someone you LOVE SO DEARLY to even consider outfitting my entire enterprise with windows! have we come to that???? or am I out of this world crazy? I ask that because, the ONE reason i murdered my "compaq laptop" was because apple gave me a reliable product. Maybe I was wrong. I just remember my windows laptop giving me grief just AS MY MAC MINI IS NOW!!!!!!! Do i take all my "mac" stuff to my drive way to "pulverize" it? And go begging back to Bill Gates??? How embarrassing!

I hope someone considers me really really inept with computers and gives me a "ok use your words" type of instructions on how to KILL iconservicesagent because, as i am writing this ridiculously long message, my macmini tells me "iconservicesagent" is using up . . . . . i kid you not . . . . . .7.3 GB.

SO PLEASE HELP ME KILL THIS **** THING!!!!

Yesterday I used the new MacBook Pro of a daughter and by connecting the external disk full of large .DMG with customized icons I saw that the slowdown is acceptable, compared to my ultra-boosted 27 ”BTO iMac (end of 2013) This means that Apple no longer devotes itself to verifying the systems with Macs that are still current, but the programmers think of their convenience, using only the most current and most powerful Macs. So they don't optimize the Code like they did before Mountain Lion, when older Macs were reborn every time a new system came out ...

Well, my posts got deleted for mentioning beta software. I really want to save everyone time troubleshooting this, so let's just say that I really don't think this will be an issue later this year.

Also, my deletions are proof that you're better off discussing important troubleshooting issues on a site other than Apple's. MacRumors has a great discussion forum.

You obviously can’t keep using Aperture, but I use Photos for organizing my >50K photographs (and soon to be >100K after scanning my film photos) and use Photos Extensions to connect with non-subscription photo editors like Luminar.

As for Mojave ISA problems, it’s absolutely no use looking for solutions to an unsolvable problem. I unfortunately have my movie files with custom icons on an external drive connected to a new Mac mini, so cannot go back to High Sierra. But I’m hoping that Catalina finally fixes this.

From the reviews of other users, I keep reading that Photos is interesting visually but is shallow on the editing. AND, if I recall correctly, the metadata doesn't transfer well going from Aperture to Photos. I could be wrong. I could try Mylio if I can stay under 25k photos, but that's a maybe. Doing the cataloguing and editing with Aperture got me spoiled. I guess I might have to use a separate editor if I convert fully to Photos.

Thanks for your post. You're correct about the ISA problems, IMO. We can't make a pony from a pig.

@Jim McDonald

Thank you for your response, informations about your situation and also for your "condolence".

I can't understand APPLE to do this ISA-drama! What should I do as an user with encrypted images? Nothing? Waiting for the next incarnation of macOS? A few years ago Steve would have killed the software developers for such a thing.

I'm completely confused about the fact, that this will be happen with my old images (created with 10.6.8), but also with the new images (created with 10.14.6). Did nobody tried it in Cupertino? Or I'm wrong and make rookie errors.

BTW: 

Since many years I did change my APPLE computers and also the operating systems only "with big jumps". Bought all my hard- and software all at once, spent time to bring all this little things to work and hope it'll work for a long period. I do not feel like spending my time with the computer itself (even this thing is a Mac), but do my work.

My first Mac - a Macintosh LC II in 1992 - survived more then 10 years. In times without internet - no problem. Later not less then 5 years, may be 5 to 7 years. So I did stand with my PowerMac 2012 until last month. For me: Best Mac ever. Very little problems, nice user interface and "the good old Mac-feeling". Does anyone think of the old clientele, but only of the new, young costumers? Yes, we are getting older too, but we are loyal!

In this year in June I bought 4 brand new Mac mini and I looked hopeful in the future. The bigger the surprise about the trouble with so many thing:

• old Time Machine Backups didn't work and I've to use "do it yourself style"

• have to migrate my "Mail" by hand

• Photos is an overloaded chimera of iPhotos and Aperture

• Finder forgot icons that I had changed (aliases)

• colors are very important in human nature ---> grey is trendy, but not so good distinguishable

• Finder is not so responsive, but maybe I'm to stoopid  to set all this little flags correct ---> but so the Mac is never the smart thing from earlier times

• and - last but not least - the "Iconserviceagent drama"

Yes, I'm not a deserter to "the dark site of the force", but APPLE makes my life harder for me than it has to be!