QuickLookSatellite MAC OS, High CPU Use

Question

I have consistently been having a problem with my computer overheating due to the process QuickLookSatellite-general using 100+ CPU use. (Please see images attached.)

On googling I found this process is associated with Draftsight, a CAD program. I do not and have never had this program installed.

Restarting does not even fix this problem. I am also worried about damaging my Macbook at such high CPU temperatures.

Any assistance is appreciated.

Solution 1

Troubleshooting steps:

• See if there are any relevant log messages in Console.app or /var/log/system.log.
• Use qlmanage -r to reset Quick Look client's generator cache.
• Run sudo opensnoop -n QuickLookSatellite-general to see if the process hangs after accessing some specific files. Or select QuickLookSatellite-general in Activity Monitor, press command-I, and see the Open Files and Ports tab.
• Temporarily delete Movie.qlgenerator, Audio.qlgenerator, or other qlgenerator bundles in /System/Library/QuickLook, and run qlmanage -r.
• Temporarily remove applications shown by qlmanage -p | grep /Applications/.
• Disable quicklookd with launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.quicklook.*. The plists are loaded again after you log out and back in.

If nothing else works, you could try doing an upgrade install of OS X from the recovery partition.

Solution 2

What I also found helpful was to turn on QuickLook debugging so I could see exactly what files were being processed. You can do that with this in the terminal. More info in the Mac Developer Library.

defaults write -g QLEnableLogging YES

You can also adjust the debugging level using qlmanage -d debuglevel. Run qlmanage -h for more info.

In my particular case it was QuickSilver causing the issue, which I fixed by disabling image previews using this command in the terminal. My thread on that is here.

defaults write com.blacktree.quicksilver "QSLoadImagePreviews" NO

Also see this similar AskDifferent question.

Comments

[andrsnn]

this is awesome. Great to know for other applications as well. Thank you!

[andrsnn]

It looks like resetting the clients generator cache seemed to solve it, but if it acts up again I will try some of your other steps.

[andrsnn]

Just to add to this I find other programs also behaving like above. Firefox and bitcoin client behave the same way.

[I say Reinstate Monica]

This answer needs more information to explain how it's related to the OPs question.

[Paul-Sebastian Manole]

This started happening when I generated documentation for a Rust project which generated lots of html files. The folder was inside iCloud drive and got picked up I think. cloudd and quicklookd both started acting up.