Processes inflation in newest OS

[melliflu]

Just got a Mac Mini with Monterey and from the start I see 1600+ threads in Activity Monitor, when I had only about 700 on my previous High Sierra Macbook.
I don't like processes inflation so I was able to kill some and the best I can do is 1207 (idle, 3 minutes after restart).

Software like Logi Option for my mouse and keyboard shows inflation too, it is around 20 threads but more than 150 threads is you install their new beta Option+ ...

Anyone else concerned about this inflation? I know we get more power with these new machines, but it's not good practice to have so many processes in background, a welcome screen could lead us to disable whatever we don't need (such as notifications, auto-updates etc.)

 

[chrfr]

Anyone else concerned about this inflation?

I'm not concerned in the least.

 

[russell_314]

No concerns here either. With the latest hardware there's no reason to fix something that's not broken. If you're trying to install a modern version of macOS on older or maybe unsupported hardware then it might actually help.

 

[bogdanw]

I was able to kill some and the best I can do is 1207 (idle, 3 minutes after restart).

With SIP disabled ("csrutil disable" from Terminal in Recovery), you can disable unnecessary processes from starting:
- launch agents
launchctl disable gui/501/com.apple.rapportd-user

- launch daemons
sudo launchctl disable system/com.apple.rapportd

rapportd is “Daemon that enables Phone Call Handoff and other communication features between Apple devices.”

A list of what can be disabled https://gist.github.com/b0gdanw/c99e5b2eefad19932554a713384dcc70

 

[6916494]

The count of processes allowed depends on the RAM. More RAM means more processes allowed. And with (almost) each macOS version Apple has increased the upper limit of processes.

Anyone else concerned about this inflation?

No.

Basically: the OS knows what it's doing.

 

[HDFan]

With the latest hardware there's no reason to fix something that's not broken.

and it is entirely possible to break something by fussing with it. I've never seen a performance hit from too many Apple Processes, assuming you have enough memory for them and your private processes. Problems I have seen are isolated to just a single process.

you can disable unnecessary processes from starting:
- launch agents

May work but just means every OS update becomes a problem with different processes, modification of the launch agents list. I'm running ~4800 threads and 832 processes. it isn't an issue.

 

[melliflu]

Basically: the OS knows what it's doing.

The OS is loading processes waiting for me to use Wifi, Airport, iCloud, Continuity, Airdrop - it is silly because I never will. When there is no Wifi activated on a desktop, all Wifi related processes should not load.

 

[bogdanw]

May work but just means every OS update becomes a problem with different processes, modification of the launch agents list.

No, there is no impact on OS updates. Unless you disable the software update agents, obviously
Used in Catalina https://gist.github.com/b0gdanw/b6fe449407465ddd6f2a657d71e1345c
Big Sur https://gist.github.com/b0gdanw/40d000342dd1ba4d892ad0bdf03ae6ea

 

[HDFan]

No, there is no impact on OS updates.

Just got a Mac Mini with Monterey and from the start I see 1600+ threads in Activity Monitor, when I had only about 700 on my previous High Sierra Macbook.

The OS is loading processes waiting for me to use Wifi, Airport, iCloud, Continuity, Airdrop - it is silly because I never will.

The OS is filled with things that you don't use, possibly more things than you do use. Have you used the Chinese text converter recently, or the Bodo keyboard, or the Arabic Encoding bundle? Let's just say for discussion sake that we use just 30% (I have no idea what the real number is) of the things that the OS provides. The other 70% are there to support users who are using different devices, languages, keyboards, etc. than the ones we use. That is why MacOS is generally much easier to use than Windows. When you want to install a driver to support something it is just there. You don't have to go find it or pay for it. [Based on a bad experience of having to find and buy a Windows driver to support video decoding which didn't work. My Mac did it automatically].

The things are there if you decide to use them. If you don't just ignore them since they almost always have no impact on your system experience. The ~20 MB of memory and cpu time that Wifi uses is insignificant, particularly if it is turned off.

 

[bogdanw]

[Based on a bad experience of having to find and buy a Windows driver to support video decoding which didn't work.

I’m sorry you got scammed on Windows. Should have asked for help in the Windows section https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/windows-linux-macos-others-on-the-mac.86/

If you don't just ignore them since they almost always have no impact on your system experience. The ~20 MB of memory and cpu time that Wifi uses is insignificant, particularly if it is turned off.

I’m not telling you what to do with your Mac.
I’ll do whatever I want with mine

 

[melliflu]

The OS is filled with things that you don't use, possibly more things than you do use. Have you used the Chinese text converter recently, or the Bodo keyboard, or the Arabic Encoding bundle?

That's another issue, the bloat of system preinstalled: 26GB on my Mini, 10% of the 256GB disk. The Monterey OS is par in size with my old High Sierra, but why can't I uninstall more Apple apps? Why Stock can be removed on IOS and not in Monterey? + I was forced to install Rosetta still, as quite a few softwares did not transition fully yet (DaVinci).