Help re: searchpartyd

[FoxyKaye]

Hi all -

Just wondering if this is expected/normal behavior... I'm currently using Ventura 13.5.1 on a 2020 MacBook Air (Intel i7). Of late (past 2-4 months), the searchpartyd process has just been off the rails taking up CPU time and running my fans at full tilt. I've force-quit it, rebooted, scanned for viruses, and done all the usual troubleshooting, and without fail it kicks in almost daily to the same effect. The online forums at Apple (and elsewhere, for that matter) don't seem to give a straight answer as to what this is doing and why, other than rumor dispelling that it's not a virus. Any thoughts from the hive mind here? What else could be putting this process into overdrive?

Kind thanks!

 

[Slartibart]

searchpartyd is the “Search Party Daemon” which allows the discovery of remote devices and services. It is part of Apple‘s “Find My” service for offline devices. An overview of "Find My" and how searchpartyd integrates with its other components is given in this article by Heinrich et al. on xarchive.

 

[FoxyKaye]

@Slartibart - That's definitely what I've understood, is that it's deeply connected to "Find My." I've had "Find My Mac" active for as long as the feature has been available, but is there anything that's changed in the past 3-6 months that would cause it to suddenly go on overdrive as a process?

 

[whiteashsaturday]

@Slartibart @FoxyKaye after reading up on the FindMy thing, I tested another theory. This is related to the "Copy Subject" option in Safari for Images to select subjects. Similar for the Preview app's Remove Background.

A way to test this:

1. Open a Photo of a person in Preview.
2. Hover your mouse over Tools > Remove Background (wait to click the menu, just hover and watch the outline of the subject)
3. When the highlighted glow begins to move around the image
4. Have Activity Monitor open sorted by CPU, and you will see "searchpartyd" grow to 140% in just a few seconds.

When right clicking on images in Safari to open a new window, this same "searchpartyd" process continues to grow over and over with each click.