Calendar using 5.61 GB of RAM...wait what? (not looking for a fix)

I was looking at something completely unrelated when I happened to open up the Activity Monitor and imagine my surprise at seeing Calendar at the top of the list using 5.61 GB of memory.



I do have 3-400 things scheduled in the calendar, but nothing too complex (just time, date, repeat from here to here, no alerts or attachments anywhere) and even now about 30 minutes later it is still using that exact 5.61 GB of memory. Never seen anything like this before.

Now, I know that I can probably fix this by restarting or even quitting the app, but this is an odd enough occurrence that I'd like to try digging deeper, partially for curiosity and partially for the possibility of submitting a coherent bug report to Apple. It doesn't seem to slow down the system so I am not in a hurry to fix it. I'd really like to see vaguely what is being allocated in this memory if possible (Open Files and Ports doesn't give any hints, at least not to me).

Any ideas or clues to narrow this down?

fisherking said:

most likely, a quirk. seriously, reboot, check it again, should be ok.
if it IS ok, you've saved yourself a lot of time investigating...a random moment.

just my 2cents...

Click to expand...

I was never looking to fix it. I want to investigate it for my own purposes because it is a weird quirk.

Besides, I probably wouldn't even have to reboot. Quitting and restarting the app would probably fix it.

FreakinEurekan said:

Reasonable to want to help, but a bug report without information about how to reproduce the error won't help much - so you need to know if it's a fluke or reproducible. Quit Calendar, restart it. If the issue never recurs, don't worry about it - if it does, you know it's reproducible and can isolate further.

Click to expand...

Which is why I was looking for clues as to what was taking up the memory. It can give me an idea of where the bug/fluke was occurring and try to reproduce it. If I were to quit calendar and restart, the original effect would be long gone.

Not that it matters anyways because it's already back to normal. Next time I'll remember to ask a more developer-oriented forum like stackexchange instead of here to get some more targeted feedback.

Thanks for your input all the same.

Weaselboy said:

When this is happening, do you see anything related to Calendar in Console log?

Having 3-400 entries should not cause any issue. I easily have that many going back.

Click to expand...

tldr: I changed the system time earlier in the day to temporarily bypass a program whose trial expired. Naturally, the system did not appreciate it and memory use of iCal must of increased due to invalid conditions that would be extremely unlikely during normal use.

Aha, that's it. I think I may have figured out the obvious precipitating factor.

As a test, I typed in "calendar" to refine the system log. Since we are now a few days out I had to actually look at the date to pull up the relevant entries. What I found was a few entries under April 14 about 10-20 minutes before I created this thread, and several more under December 1....which is extremely strange because the logs would have certainly turned over by now. Now as I look back at the whole (unfiltered) system log I realize that going back it suddenly changes from April 14 to December 1. The logs themselves show a mass of certificate errors related to calendar and iCloud in general during the "December 1" dates, which is expected because it of course wouldn't be able to validate the certificates when the system time has been altered.

...Which means that it is (probably) still technically a bug that caused the memory to balloon, it was just my own fault because the conditions were something that Apple developers would not anticipate (and would have little reason to fix anyways, even if they could). So...unless I manage to figure out how to reproduce it and can give Apple a very specific set of conditions... I'd say this is definitely a non starter. It may still be useful to remember the effects this whole thing might have considering someone somewhere is bound to play with things like I did.

Well, that was a fun digression.