For quite some time, I have been experiencing issues with the system process usernoted consuming a significant amount of CPU and consequently slowing down everything. Since the latest updates, the problem has worsened. I am still using version 15.7 and I need a little more time before I can update to Tahoe. Usernoted now consistently consumes over 200% of CPU, causing the Notification Center to freeze and the arrow cursor to disappear. I have searched for solutions, but I have not been able to find anything that has worked. There are several suggestions for solutions involving terminal commands, but as I am not familiar with the terminal, I am hesitant to pursue this route as I do not know what I am doing.
So, dear Mac power users, could you please help me out? This problem is really starting to get on my nerves!
These are going to be pretty basic first troubleshooting steps:
Have you tried a complete system reboot?
Have you tried killing the process from Activity Monitor?
Are there any other symptoms that you are seeing that are causing issues? Is your machine slow/hanging when booting etc?
I would hazard a guess that with this issue following from update to update that there is something else running on your machine that is causing usernoted to consume the mentioned CPU whilst managing notification services.
It would also be nice to have a few more details around the machine you are using etc. These can all be found from:
Apple > About This Mac > Further Information
Yes, I have tried rebooting, but nothing has changed.
Yes, I regularly quit usernoted in the activity monitor. In the past, quitting usernoted would solve the problem for a while, just long enough that it didn’t bother me that much. Then the CPU usage was just over 100%. However, after the last updates, I’ve noticed that usernoted starts immediately after quitting it in the activity monitor, and usage now goes over 200%.
I apologize for forgetting to include some additional information:
Please refer to the screenshot below.
I am using a MacBook Air M2 with 24 GB of RAM and I always stay up to date with the latest updates, though I am currently still on 15.7.
I think it may be worth at first finding exactly what application it is that is calling this process so to speak.
You can either do this by the two below methods:
Open Activity Monitor, Find usernoted process, double click the process, open files and ports, look through these details/outputs for any further clues as to what might be causing usernoted to behave in that sort of way.
Alternatively you can open Terminal, paste in the following command: log show --predicate 'process == "usernoted"' --info
Examine the output for anything that shows excessively/regularly and go from there. After doing a bit of googling (AKA 4th line) it sometimes refers to Keychain Access as being an offender for this issue. Might be a red herring though so don’t hold out on it just being that simple!
I followed your advice, but I am having trouble understanding the results. Below are two screenshots from the activity monitor. I am not sure if they provide any useful information. When I click on “analyze,” it generates a large text file that is difficult for me to decipher.
I am experiencing similar difficulties with the terminal. The text appears to be repetitive, and I have attached a sample of what is frequently displayed.
Pretty sure this output has something to do with Do Not Disturb and DEVONthink. Something to do with it holding a notification that was sent from DEVONthink whilst the device was in Do Not Disturb mode and then delivering it at a later point when Do Not Disturb was no longer active. I would guess that is completely normal behaviour and exactly how it is supposed to work.
I can’t tell you whether this is causing your issue. But I would suggest to really interrogate the outputs to see if there is an application/service that consistently comes up and then look at the notification settings etc of that app/service specifically.
