3

I have Mac OSX Yosemite, 10.10.1 and halfway through last month my computer decided to download about 500MB every day. I even quit all programs and it still downloaded 447MB. I am seeing this number in the network section of Activity Monitor and the Process name listed is nsurlsessiond. What is this downloading and how do I stop it?

Improve this question
10
  • google just the term nsurlsessiond and it seems to deal with the photo's app. There is so much info tho I quit reading, you're not the only one by far that's complaining.....
    – Tyson
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 4:16
  • 1
    If you run "lsof -i -n -P | grep TCP" in terminal it will show you who.
    – Ruskes
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 4:25
  • 1
    @Tyson It can't be the Photos app, because this is 10.10.1 and Photos was introduced in 10.10.3.
    – Mike Scott
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 5:21
  • lsof doesn't return anything useful now so the nsurlsession must not be running. I'll check again later.
    – Daniel
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 5:28
  • nsurlsessiond downloads data on behalf of other apps in the background. This includes iCloud Drive, Photos (10.10.3 & later), Photo Stream, and presumably third-party apps that implement it. You could monitor what domains it's communicating with by using something like Little Snitch so you can narrow down what program it is.
    – tubedogg
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 10:12

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

nsurlsessiond deals with iCloud & also Spotlight.

  • for Spotlight - Prefs > Spotlight > Search Results & switch off Spotlight Suggestions & Bing Web Searches.

  • iCloud, some suggestions…

    • Disable iCloud Photo Library, Photo Stream & iCloud Photo Sharing from
      System prefs > iCloud - Photos [or equivalent, I can't remember the precise layout before Photos app]

    • If you have an iPhone, the same settings are in Settings > iCloud > Photos

Improve this answer
2

nsurlsessionhd can be disabled with

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nsurlsessiond.plist

BUT you run the risk of some Apple (and maybe non-Apple) apps not being able to connect to the internet, specifically App Store, iTunes, software updater, etc. If that is the case re-enable by replacing unload with load in the command above.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .