(OS X) Dropbox consuming a lot of CPU whenever any file or folder is changed anywhere

[Dave H.]

On my OS X 10.9.5 system I'm seeing Dropbox consume CPU whenever anything on the file system changes, regardless of whether the changed files or folders are in the Dropbox synced folders. The CPU usage is proportionate to the rate of file system changes.

When I'm running an installer that takes a long time and has high disk activity (e.g. installing a documenation update in XCode), then the Dropbox CPU usage goes through the roof and I see the Dropbox sync status change from 'up to date' to 'indexing'. For less sustained activities with less intensive file system changes, I see Dropbox just popup briefly in the list of top CPU consumers -- but it shouldn't be showing up at all (or certainly not at double digit CPU use and not for the duration of the file system activity.

My guess is that Dropbox is simply listening for file system events and reacting to each one as if it might be change in a synced file or folder. It should be ignoring fsevents that are for items outside the Dropbox folders -- but it seems not to be the case. 😞 😞

I'm on 3.0.3, but have been seeing this problem since the 2.* days.

--
Dave Hein

[Kevin Y.2]

This is the only thing that worked for me:

http://www.michaelcarwile.com/throttle-dropbox-and-other-app-cpu-usage/

Dropbox (and other apps) has a tendency to use every bit of CPU it can, especially when starting up. On Mac (with Homebrew installed), Dropbox (and other apps) can be throttled via a tool called cpulimit.

Install cpulimit:

brew install cpulimit  	

Get Dropbox’s Process ID:

ps aux | grep Dropbox
	
user    19628  104.7  2.3  xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx   ??  R     4:07PM  15:47.12 /Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/MacOS/Dropbox

Run cpulimit with the -p flag using the process ID:

cpulimit -p 19628 -l 40

Note: That’s a lowercase L (for limit) and the last number (40 in this case) is the percentage % of CPU you’d like to throttle the app to.

Also Note: cpulimit will output ‘Process xxx found’ and will continue to run until you kill it with <CTRL> + C

[Nathan & Shelle]

Just installed -- this is really cool, thanks... will be handy not just Dropbox.  I might figure out a way to write a little script that can grab the PID for dropbox without too much trouble and start up.  Will post back here.

[jaybwilliams1]

I have a new mac pro (2017) and I have the same 100% CPU problem. Can you provide the stes to remove the symlinks in a safe way?

Thanks,

[SidianMSJones]

I'm using shortcut folders (is that a symlink?) pointing TO folders inside the Dropbox folder. Would that cause this CPU issue?

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