iconservicesagent OS Mojave issue

Same issue here. I have a lot of custom icons on my files. Iconservices tries to load those. The very same problem existed with High Sierra and was fixed around 6 Months after the release. I really didn't think they would make the same mistake again.

Exact same issue myself. I remember High Sierra doing this also but being fixed. It was the biggest reason I did not want Mojave. Really regret it now. Apple needs to understand this type of "issue" or "bug" actually renders users like us completely frozen out. $3,000 for an iMac that I cannot use right now. I'm back on my old Macbook Air that I left on High Sierra.

I appreciate what you've provided helps restore the computer to functionality, however to be clear to Apple more than you, this is NOT a solution.

Not because it didn't work. I won't try it. I took my iMac to an Apple Store Genius Bar, and a wonderful employee fixed my problem, and restored it to High Sierra. Guess what? No problems at all with icons. His advice was to never upgrade the OS unless you know why you are.

It's disgusting that a $3,000 iMac runs fine on OLD software, but when updated, is unusable. I assume this will be fixed over the next year of updates, but it's still unacceptable. I have been using Macs for over a decade, and have built a massive film and HD music collection on external HD that all have wonderful bright artwork. To say I would need to erase this to use my new Mac, when my 2012 MacBook Air runs it fine, is absurd.

I do appreciate your response and effort. Thanks

Thanks, I3rendan... I dropped this into a text file and ran it as a shell script in terminal and got a syntax error - line 2: syntax error: unexpected end of file/. Also tried as a bash script. with the same error.

Any insight or help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks I3rendan - that did it for all files with the exception of .m4v files. On the .mp4 and .mkv files the images are gone... but the .m4v files are still showing cover art for the icons. Do .m4v files have a different file structure? Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

I'm actually not sure about .m4v files, it could be that they're setup differently. For those you may have to do it the old fashioned way (opening the Info, clicking on the icon in the top-left and hitting Delete).

Agree with all the comments and been living with this for a long time even prior to Mojave but appears to have returned as part of this upgrade

Pleading for a solution from Apple - I don't have a lot of custom icons that I know of and going and deleting them is not something I want to do

Mac OS used to be rock solid and I would reboot perhaps once every 6 months. Now rebooting is a priority every 1-2 days to restore memory that has been consumed by iconservicesagent - in my setup it climbs and sits at 10GB!

I can force quit but who knows what that will do long term so I reboot frequently to try and restore my MBP to a reasonable semblance of usability

I have the same experience since upgrading to Mojave. The system slows down.

I have 100GB free on my HD, and mainly use Outlook and Word and it has NEVER slowed down before, and disclosed a spinning wheel with High Sierra.

The Activity Monitor shows entries such as kernel_task, iconserviceagent, update_dyld_shared_cache, report crash....with large CPU%.

There is clearly something wrong with Mojave.

Also it won't work with Samsung SmartSwitch, and the Outlook search engine does not work (Microsoft have acknowledged this and are investigating).

Personally I fine Mojave a complete disaster and will switch back to High Sierra.

When is a bug fix planned by Apple?

I am an Apple user of macOS Classic and I am disappointed.

I have the same problem in my iMac 27 '' 2014 BTO, Intel i7 CPU, 24 GB of RAM and the best video card.

The new Apple developers are not able to program well and I think that Steve would have fired many ... Maybe they are former developers of Windows... Apple has become famous and has conquered the markets thanks to its elegance. Steve no longer be present to demand what is beautiful, ergonomic and functional.

In addition to the problem of custom icons that slow down the Macs (at least until you reorganize the cache of the folder with many custom icons), what to say, then, the very bad Mail.app Preferences that fit badly, moving from one panel to another and that truncate the names of custom accounts? It's horrible especially if, like me, users have many POP accounts to manage and use custom names to distinguish them from one another. For example: abcdefghi.abcdefghi<@>gmali.xxx - abcdefghi.abcdefghi<@>yahoo.xxx, etc.

My brand new ridiculously fast iMac beachballs forever if I open a window containing files with custom icons. I use them in my movie collection, and have done so for years. This was never a problem until Mohave. I am NOT GOING TO REMOVE hundreds of movie poster art icons, which are not hi-res images (all are 512x512), since I spent at lot of time and had a lot of fun finding them (many of them I made myself). FIX THIS ALREADY!!!

I'm having the same issue. iconservicesagent is garbage in 10.14. I have all kinds of issues with it related to sucking up RAM, freezing the Finder, distorting icons, and delays when pasting and removing icons. I'm going to try running that script to clear them out, but this makes me so many. I've been building my movie collection folder for over 10 years, spent countless time on custom icons, and now it's impossible to open the folder. Ridiculously poor job on Apple's part.

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