Dropbox, OneDrive 100% CPU usage, fans high macOS Mojave 10.14.*

While troubleshooting Dropbox and OneDrive recently I re-installed both. Now both apps use 100% CPU usage and ramp the fans up whenever the apps are open — even while not syncing. For example, the fans were running at full blast for hours last night even though both apps reported that all syncing was "up to date".

Background factors:

Fresh install of Dropbox and OneDrive
MacBook Air running macOS Mojave 10.14.1
Known-good Wifi connection (roughly 25mbps down, 10mbps up)
In-app settings: open at login, adjust sync rate automatically

To make sure the fresh installs were not bad, I (re)re-installed both. Same behavior.

MacBook Air, macOS High Sierra (10.13.2)

Posted on Oct 31, 2018 6:53 AM

Top-ranking reply

xser Author

Level 1

119 points

Posted on Oct 31, 2018 7:08 AM

What fixed it for me:
- In OneDrive Preferences, turn off (unckeck) "Open at login".
- In macOS System Preferences > Users & Groups > [Your User] > Login Items, click "+", navigate to "Applications" in the pop-up window, and choose "OneDrive".

Aside: this procedure also fixed the same issue with Dropbox. (In Dropbox preferences, the thing to turn off (uncheck) is "Start Dropbox at system startup").

So the issue seems to be related to how Dropbox and OneDrive operate when "Open at login" is enabled within the app (vs. within macOS system preferences).

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Dropbox, OneDrive 100% CPU usage, fans high macOS Mojave 10.14.*

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