MacOS – High CPU usage by a process called PTPCamera

activity-monitormacos

On my Macbook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) is a process, called PTPCamera, using a lot of CPU-Time . I already have killed this process but it spawned immediately again.

85% of CPU usage eats my Battery so I would be happy if anyone could help ?

I found out that the process is a "Picture Transfer Process for a Camera" in Short PTPCamera it will be launched by iPhoto.app and also with the newer Photo.app. But still does not explain the high CPU usage without a Phone connected.

So what is this process for and how can I control its behaviour? Anyone else has this problem and how did you solve this?

Best Answer

So we found the Solution:

Connect your iPhone/Camera and reopen Photos.app or iPhoto
Close iPhoto or Photos.app
Disconnect your iPhone/Camera
Open Photos/iPhoto again

now the PTPCamera Process should be terminated gracefully and won't spawn again in a busy waiting loop.

You do not have to do this steps all the time, only necessary to terminate the process graceful and kick it out of the busy waiting state. How to come in this state, we (AppleDev and I) do not know.

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MacOS Performance – High CPU Usage by Process ‘ubd’

By observing log messages in ~/Library/Logs/Ubiquity/<my username>/, I realized that Ubiquity (iCloud process) kept trying to create a file in a folder that doesn't exist:

ubiquity log

I opened up the Terminal and created this directory and its parent directories up to .ubd:

cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/
sudo mkdir .ubd && cd .ubd
sudo mkdir peer-E2B13E4F-56F7-C79B-1621-E30738B638FE-v23 && cd peer-E2B13E4F-56F7-C79B-1621-E30738B638FE-v23
sudo mkdir ftr

Then I changed the newly created directories' owner from root to myself:

cd ../..
sudo chown -R <my username> .ubd/

The fan turned silent instantly.

MacOS – There is a process called SH using 100% of the CPU

sh is a shell, a program that provides a command-line interface to your computer. It can be used either interactively, or as an interpreter for script files, such as the famous periodic maintenance scripts. Some such script is likely running in this case, and may be stuck for some reason.

You should be able to find out what script that is by using Inspect on the sh processes in Activity Monitor and looking at the Open Files and Ports tab. A file listed there with the .sh extension is a shell script. Its name will hopefully give you a clue as to its purpose; you can also open it as text and inspect it.

Best Answer

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MacOS Performance – High CPU Usage by Process ‘ubd’

MacOS – There is a process called SH using 100% of the CPU

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