iCloud "BIRD" process gobbling up memory

[Mork]

I've noticed in the Activity Monitor that every few days the iCloud "bird" process is using up almost all available memory.

I have an iMac with 128 GB RAM and this morning, bird was using 96 GB of it!

This issue was happening on Mac 13.0.1 and recent previous versions also.

I have to force-quit bird to fix the memory issue, but the bird memory issue keeps happening.

Any suggestions how to fix this bird memory issue?

Thanks very much in advance,

 

[bogdanw]

I don’t remember exactly what happened when I disabled bird (com.apple.bird), but I have it now in a list titled “do not disable” in capital letters
Besides logging out and rebooting, I have a suggestion that might bring bird under control.
According to the manual bird is “Documents in the Cloud … bird is one of the system daemons backing the Documents in the Cloud feature.”
If you are not using this feature, sign out of your AppleID from System Preferences, create a profile to disallow the use of iCloud Documents, install it and log back with your Apple ID.
I’ve posted about profiles here https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...after-update-to-ventura.2369089/post-31797126
The image is from iMazing Profile Editor, the easiest to use.

 

[rafalio]

Are you running anything else that needs that memory at the time?

Because just from the situation you describe, that might look weird that it’s using so much memory but it doesn’t sound like a problem.
In fact, processes _should_ be attempting to use up as much RAM as possible (after all you did pay for the 128GB so better use it!) if it makes the workload faster and there’s nothing else needing the memory at the time. Otherwise it’s just wasting memory.

And since bird has the advantage that’s it’s an Apple-controlled daemon, I would guess the moment other apps actually do need the memory, bird will get deprioritised and told to purge some RAM. So unless you’re running other apps and seeing full 128GB ram usage and hitting swap, I wouldn’t worry about it.

 

[bogdanw]

Are you running anything else that needs that memory at the time?

Because just from the situation you describe, that might look weird that it’s using so much memory but it doesn’t sound like a problem.
In fact, processes _should_ be attempting to use up as much RAM as possible (after all you did pay for the 128GB so better use it!) if it makes the workload faster and there’s nothing else needing the memory at the time. Otherwise it’s just wasting memory.

And since bird has the advantage that’s it’s an Apple-controlled daemon, I would guess the moment other apps actually do need the memory, bird will get deprioritised and told to purge some RAM. So unless you’re running other apps and seeing full 128GB ram usage and hitting swap, I wouldn’t worry about it.

What are you talking about?!?
Open Activity Monitor and see how much memory bird is using on your system. Here is mine 1.2MB

 

[rafalio]

What are you talking about?!?
Open Activity Monitor and see how much memory bird is using on your system. Here is mine 1.2MB
View attachment 2128437

Of course, yeah in steady state it will be small. But without more info from the OP, hard to say what the issue, if any, is. The situations I’m imagining:

* Perhaps iCloud Drive is set on that Mac to free up space instead of keeping everything on disk. Then potentially the mac needs to do a large synchronisation often.
* Perhaps some other Mac connected to this iCloud Drive does something which updates a lot of files (or even a few huge files, say movies), even something as small as changing the last updated file timestamp. Then bird on the Mac would likely have to recompute file hashes for potentially large files in order to reconcile any differences.


For the OP, next time you see it I recommend opening up Terminal, and doing ‘brctl log --wait’ and seeing what exactly the iCloud deamon is doing.

 

[Mork]

Of course, yeah in steady state it will be small. But without more info from the OP, hard to say what the issue, if any, is. The situations I’m imagining:

* Perhaps iCloud Drive is set on that Mac to free up space instead of keeping everything on disk. Then potentially the mac needs to do a large synchronisation often.
* Perhaps some other Mac connected to this iCloud Drive does something which updates a lot of files (or even a few huge files, say movies), even something as small as changing the last updated file timestamp. Then bird on the Mac would likely have to recompute file hashes for potentially large files in order to reconcile any differences.


For the OP, next time you see it I recommend opening up Terminal, and doing ‘brctl log --wait’ and seeing what exactly the iCloud deamon is doing.

Thank you!

I'll wait for the next time this happens and run this command.

Appreciate all the great comments here.

 

[Mork]

What are you talking about?!?
Open Activity Monitor and see how much memory bird is using on your system. Here is mine 1.2MB
View attachment 2128437

My bird memory usage is normally 4.2MB.

When I hear the Mac's fans running, I check bird. Then I notice the high memory usage. I kill the bird process and the Mac's fans go silent again...