High CPU Usage on macOS Catalina.... This is very annoying!

Anonymous
2020-03-31T01:33:17+00:00

Hey guys,

I've been feeling very frustrated about OneDrive:

Ever since I've switched to Catalina on my MBP 15", OneDrive keeps spinning up a bunch of processes called "OneDrive Finder Integration", about 5-6 of them and then Finder goes over 130% along with another system-level process. Needless to say, this kicks up the fans to the full speed and, if running on battery, chews up through so much of the battery. The only other way around this is to pause the app which defeats the whole point of having a "cloud" backup. I've looked around, run a bunch of scripts suggested, uninstalled, reset and then reinstalled the app with no success. Can someone help me with this?

BTW, why can't I check my Preferences (where the version number is accessible) when OneDrive is paused?!!! this is just poor planning as far as I'm concerned!

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments No comments

57 answers

Sort by: Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2020-12-02T03:22:58+00:00

    What is it processing and why? According to the app, the last file updated was 9 hours ago! Truly, where's the dev team? Probably working on another project that MS has to shut down innovative companies like Slack! ;)

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2020-12-02T03:31:17+00:00

    That is exactly what mine is doing and I'm on the bleeding edge, Version 20.201.1005.0008. It has been doing this for over a year now--possibly longer.  I opened a ticket with Microsoft on the enterprise side but they stopped helping me because I refused to switch back to the non-insider preview version.  They assumed it was the preview version.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2020-12-03T11:19:44+00:00

    Well, their online reviews reflect their efforts in fixing things so far. I wonder if this is something that we can bring to some major media outlets' attention and see how MS' big wigs respond! Wait, they're busy figuring out which other innovative company they can copy next.... 

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  4. Anonymous
    2020-12-24T10:54:02+00:00

    I recently encountered a high CPU usage problem and loud fans reported by others with the 'distnoted' process running high when I chose to sync existing OneDrive folders (around 85GB of new data to sync to my Mac from Onedrive).

    For reference, I'm using a 2016 Macbook Pro i7 running MacOS Big Sur 11.1

    Instead of disabling the Finder extension for Onedrive suggested by others, which removes the sync status icons next to each folder/file, I disabled the 'Allow Notifications' for OneDrive in the Notifications Centre and it appears I don't need to do anything further.

    From my experience, my CPU load is much lower and fan noise has all but gone away, for me, this appears to have been enough.

    It will still take time for files to the first sync but this is true in Windows also.

    Since making this change I've not had further issues with the CPU load on OneDrive or 'distnoted' process (Notifications) but if I encounter other issues (or the CPU load goes back up) in the coming days/weeks I will edit this post with any additional actions/steps I take.

    Thought I would share, hope someone finds this useful.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  5. Anonymous
    2021-01-03T06:14:18+00:00

    I recently encountered a high CPU usage problem and loud fans reported by others with the 'distnoted' process running high when I chose to sync existing OneDrive folders (around 85GB of new data to sync to my Mac from Onedrive).

    For reference, I'm using a 2016 Macbook Pro i7 running MacOS Big Sur 11.1

    Instead of disabling the Finder extension for Onedrive suggested by others, which removes the sync status icons next to each folder/file, I disabled the 'Allow Notifications' for OneDrive in the Notifications Centre and it appears I don't need to do anything further.

    From my experience, my CPU load is much lower and fan noise has all but gone away, for me, this appears to have been enough.

    It will still take time for files to the first sync but this is true in Windows also.

    Since making this change I've not had further issues with the CPU load on OneDrive or 'distnoted' process (Notifications) but if I encounter other issues (or the CPU load goes back up) in the coming days/weeks I will edit this post with any additional actions/steps I take.

    Thought I would share, hope someone finds this useful.

    Image

    Thanks a lot! This response really helped fix my problem on Big Sur 11.1 that OneDrive and distnoted processes were eating up CPU constantly for no reason even when there was no activity in terms of file changes. Together, they were eating up as much as 290% of my CPU. After turning off Notifications as suggested above, I had to quit OneDrive and restart it, and also killed the distnoted process using Activity manager. After this change, things are a lot better. I see that the OneDrive process becomes active only when there is some change to some file in OneDrive. OneDrive still eats up 100-200% of the CPU when it kicks in, but thankfully that subsides as soon as the sync is done....and all is quiet until the next change. My iMac is overall very stable now whereas earlier it used to freeze up very frequently with the spinning beachball etc. Don't see any of that now! Thanks one again for the excellent suggestion.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments