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A few times a week, the Finder on my Macbook shoots up to around 100% CPU use, and the fans start blasting.

I've done everything I can think of - repaired permissions, rebooted, trashed preferences, turned off "show preview" in view options, audited the Activity Monitor for unnecessary processes, scoured the Console for errors, restarted the Finder, and a lot more. Eventually it subsides, and I assume that the source of the error was the last thing I changed.

But it's doing it again now, and I am at a loss. I wish there was a way to "get inside the Finder's head" and see what it's doing. I've tried running a sample of the Finder process in Activity Monitor, but honestly I don't know what it's doing, much less how to interpret the output.

That's really my hope: that someone can explain a better way to investigate CPU spikes like this, not just in the Finder, but any runaway process. There are certainly plenty of details that might help you all diagnose this specific case, but before I spew out even more probably-irrelevant information, I thought I'd see if anyone has general tips for diagnosing this sort of thing.

This is my first Stack-anything post btw, so please be gentle. Thanks in advance!

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  • The next time it comes up run top -o cpu from Terminal to get a better grasp on what is going on.
    – phwd
    Commented Jan 26, 2011 at 23:24
  • You can use lsof to list open files. Also helpful might be fuser.
    – user588
    Commented Jan 26, 2011 at 23:54
  • Out of curiosity, do you have FileVault enabled? Or Secure Empty Trash?
    – Nathan Greenstein
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 2:35
  • Perhaps better than lsof or fuser is fs_usage. Some combination of those three, limited to just the process that is hogging the CPU (found via top), ought to help, assuming I/O is involved.
    – user588
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 6:20
  • lsof seems very useful. Didn't find a specific suspicious file to try fuser on. Trying fs_usage right now on configd (see answer to NSGod below). @Nathan - nope, neither.
    – Jesse Baer
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 16:12

7 Answers 7

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"I wish there was a way to "get inside the Finder's head" and see what it's doing. I've tried running a sample of the Finder process in Activity Monitor, but honestly I don't know what it's doing, much less how to interpret the output."

Taking a sample in Activity Monitor is exactly that: getting inside the Finder's head to see what it's doing. While it may seem like greek, I or others here can interpret it for you. Just post it, or make it available for download or viewing (as they tend to be pretty big).

What version of OS X are you using? In OS X 10.5.x and prior, I believe multimedia content ran within the Finder itself, rather than delegating it off to an agent/helper type process, so then the CPU usage may appear higher. For example, previewing a QuickTime movie might make the 10.5.x-and-earlier Finder spike to 60% CPU, while in 10.6 it might be split to something like 10% CPU for the Finder, 30% CPU to the QTKitHelper background process.

Otherwise, I've sometimes seen the code the Finder uses to calculate the size of the contents of a folder cause temporary CPU spikes. (You'll notice something like TSomething::HFSSizerSomething in the stack trace of a sample). Usually it seems insistent on finishing its calculation even if the view you had open that warranted the calculation has since been closed.

In any case, seeing the sample should help pinpoint the issue along with knowing what context led up to the spike. It'll be easier to explain what taking a sample is doing once we have it in front of us to look at.

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  • I had the Finder set to show invisible files, and turning that off seemed to cure things. I'd had that setting on for a while though, so I'm hesitant to assume that I've cured the problem for good. As I mentioned, there have been other cases where I thought I'd solved this only to see it happen again.
    – Jesse Baer
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 15:51
  • (meant to add this but the edit timed out…) Looks like we have another opportunity to try this out though - suddenly configd is taking 15-20% of my CPU. Not awful, but unusual, and apparently enough, in conjunction with Chrome and a warm office, to trigger my fan… Here's the output from sampling configd: pastebin.com/aEaSN1zc
    – Jesse Baer
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 16:00
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You have DTrace available.

man -k DTrace

Those tools, plus fs_usage -f filesys should give you the answer.

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Change the finder > preferences > General "New Finder Window Show" option to anything but "All my files". This helps a lot.

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Good advice so far. I'll share some experience I had with a Powerbook back in Tiger (but since Leopard also has a FatFinder process, this issue would occur in 10.5 too).

I remember having an AVI in a folder. The format was a weird format, not a simple Quicktime movie or anything; back then cellphone cameras were bad and used the worst possible codecs ever created. So every time I went to that "folder" with Finder, it will hang, because it was trying to "read" the file and the codec was bad.

Eventually, either by luck or because I forgot about it (or deleted it), this stopped happening. But it took me a while to figure out what it was. I remember this exact behavior happening to me on Leopard with a "badly" formatted video too. Quicklook would hang the finder with that piece of media.

I had to open it with VLC to "repair" it. And then it mysteriously started working again.

I suggest you try to keep an eye of your usage patterns before the CPU spike to see if there's something in common. A file type, a specific folder, a specific time, etc.

At the time of the writing, I don't know your OS X version (10.x?) so this information may be slightly outdated if you are running Snow Leopard.

Additionally, follow the advice of trying to output fs_usage, top, and similar tools. It may give us a better hint. Output from Console.app (/Applications/Utilities) could throw some light to the issue.

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  • Thanks - as you may have noted from my answer to NSGod, the Finder CPU usage has gone down, but now configd seems to be acting up, albeit mildly. I wouldn't normally worry about it, but I'd like here's the Console output from the
    – Jesse Baer
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 16:23
  • last hour or so, which definitely encompasses when configd started getting busy: pastebin.com/V8qpLuD2
    – Jesse Baer
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 16:29
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I've found only two tools to be broadly helpful in solving high CPU usage issues on one isolated program. Yes, activity monitor can sample and tell you where it's hung up / processing - but I find Instruments to be better suited to really getting at the nub of the issue if fs_usage can't. DTrace is awesome - I just have never needed to spend the time learning it - Instruments works well enough and the learning curve for me was much lower.

  1. fs_usage and grep to narrow down what files are being accessed often lets me know what/where the issues lie so I can take action to remedy / tune it.
  2. Instruments app - Xcode 3 is provided to free developers or Xcode 4 (purchased in the Mac App Store or as a paid developer). Think of this like sample/activity monitor on steroids - you can poke around at things like memory allocation / leaks and get a much borader view of what's happening inside a slow process as it's running.
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I'd been plagued by high Finder CPU usage for a few weeks (80-100%). Eventually I discovered that it was due to my setting Finder to calculate all the sizes in a folder. This option isn't enabled by default, but it's worth checking just in case

  1. Open Finder
  2. From the menu bar, select View -> Show View Options
  3. Make sure "Calculate All Sizes" is unchecked
  4. Click "Use as Defaults"

Once I did this I saw my Finder CPU usage drop immediately to 0%.

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I'm on a MacBook, OSX 10.6.8. I too have been experiencing innumerable "Finder CPU binges," accompanied by the fan. Console reports all sorts of puzzling complaints, often multiply repeated [other situations also cause the fan to spin, and Console shows multi-repeat complaints].

I recently discovered that turning off my Airport quiets Finder right down. Not a very useful cure, as right now I have Airport on so I can be here, and yes, Activity Monitor shows Finder consuming upwards of 100% CPU [whatever that might be —?]

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