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universalaccessd - High Memory Usage

cryohellinc

cryohellinc

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 25, 2021
40
14
Hi all,

Currently on M1 Mac Monterey 12 Beta (21A5534d)

universalaccessd seems to have very high memory usage. Sometimes it goes all the way to 9gb.

1635162720357.png


What is the cause of this? Sometimes I just manually go and kill the process. But it keeps coming back. Any suggestions how to battle this?

Thank you!
 
found this on a very old post

"after a bit of experimenting, it looks like it's a background app that handles zooming (turned on or off in the System Preferences->Universal Access). It is opened when zoom is turned on, and quit when zoom is turned off"

might be in a different place now, but see if it has been turned on, and turn it off (can always turn it back on if needed)
 
cryohellinc said:
Any suggestions how to battle this?
Click to expand...
You're running several apps that I would suspect might be causing this.

1) DisplayLink - This integrates deep into the system and probably hasn't been fully tested with Monterey. If you don't need it, try working without it.

2) CleanMyMac - This is absolute trash and every trace of it should be removed from your machine (see other threads).

3) The Microsoft stuff (Team Helper, Edge Helper) - I don't know how much these "helpers" mess with the system. I can say that I run Teams and it has no affect on the memory used by universalaccessd. So they are probably ok, but worth checking out.

Follow a methodical system to investigate this. Make one change at a time. Restart, and check for results. Start by uninstalling CleanMyMac.
 
anubis1980 said:
found this on a very old post

"after a bit of experimenting, it looks like it's a background app that handles zooming (turned on or off in the System Preferences->Universal Access). It is opened when zoom is turned on, and quit when zoom is turned off"

might be in a different place now, but see if it has been turned on, and turn it off (can always turn it back on if needed)
Click to expand...
Where can I find that setting on Monterey?
chabig said:
You're running several apps that I would suspect might be causing this.

1) DisplayLink - This integrates deep into the system and probably hasn't been fully tested with Monterey. If you don't need it, try working without it.

2) CleanMyMac - This is absolute trash and every trace of it should be removed from your machine (see other threads).

3) The Microsoft stuff (Team Helper, Edge Helper) - I don't know how much these "helpers" mess with the system. I can say that I run Teams and it has no affect on the memory used by universalaccessd. So they are probably ok, but worth checking out.

Follow a methodical system to investigate this. Make one change at a time. Restart, and check for results. Start by uninstalling CleanMyMac.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the input.

This issue is new, as I have been using the above-mentioned apps for months without those issues.

Regarding Cleanmymac - I agree, it's trash. Got rid of it. However, for the other two - DisplayLink is mandatory to use on M1 pro if you have more than one external screen. No other way around this (unless you know something else - please suggest).

Even after turning all of them off, the issue still occurs. The RAM usage by the service keeps getting bigger and bigger.

What is that service even related to?
 
I mean... honestly. What the hell is this? A memory leak?
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2021-10-29 at 16.06.35.png
    Screen Shot 2021-10-29 at 16.06.35.png
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I think I've found a solution.

Had both settings turned on, seems there is a bug in the new version.
Screen Shot 2021-10-29 at 16.45.12.png


After turning it off
Screen Shot 2021-10-29 at 16.47.06.png



Hopefully, it won't creep up again.
 
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cryohellinc said:
I think I've found a solution.
Had both settings turned on, seems there is a bug in the new version.
After turning it off
Hopefully, it won't creep up again.
Click to expand...
I don't think that is the cause, I have them both turned on too and the memory used is only 11 MB.
 
bogdanw said:
I don't think that is the cause, I have them both turned on too and the memory used is only 11 MB.
Click to expand...
Well, now two hours of work and no issue. It's still at 6.6Mb

What macOS version are you on and what are your specs?
 
Hi all,

I've also experienced this odd process (universalaccessd) consuming most of the memory.

Tried quitting it though but it comes back again with ~86MB consumption.

As I put it on sleep mode and logged back in again, I've noticed that the process went up (200MB+).

Did it multiple times and it keeps winning the gold medal.

Thanks to cryohellinc's solution, I remembered that I did changed the pointer settings on System Preferences->Accessibility->Display->Pointer ( Size and Color )

Reverted it back to default settings, quit the process again then rebooted the system.

Fortunately, the process went stable ~6MB consumption despite doing multiple sleep modes and logging back in.

Hope this will give light to others as well. Cheers!


M1 MacOS Monterey 12.0.1 (21A559) - Current OS

Screen Shot 2021-11-04 at 9.34.56 AM.png
 
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Yeah...

I have this same problem with MBA M1. Today, when I first opened the laptop, everything went fine for a while, but then a pop-up message saying my apps are using too much memory appeared. The culprit in the pop-up seemed to be Firefox (using 32Gb of memory -- out of my 16Gb???). Went and did some research and didn't have to look a far as those articles about the memory leak shed some light.

Now I've been checking the activity monitor and every time I wake my MBA from sleep 'universalaccessd' jumps up by 200-500Mb. And it does that every time the laptop goes to sleep and wakes up. After 30 consecutive sleep-wake up cycles it was using 8Gb of memory. None of the solutions above have worked.

My best quess is that this is part of the same problem like the rest of the Memory Leak problems in macOS Monterey which have now started to appear. MacRumors, MacWorld and DigitalTrends have at least acknowledged this (https://www.macworld.com/article/54...-leaks-m1-macbook-macos-monterey-big-sur.html)



So. Most propably we have to wait for the fix from Apple.
 
Last edited:
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samumon said:
Yeah...

I have this same problem with MBA M1. Today, when I first opened the laptop, everything went fine for a while, but then a pop-up message saying my apps are using too much memory appeared. The culprit in the pop-up seemed to be Firefox (using 32Gb of memory -- out of my 16Gb???). Went and did some research and didn't have to look a far as those articles about the memory leak shed some light.

Now I've been checking the activity monitor and every time I wake my MBA from sleep 'universalaccessd' jumps up by 200-500Mb. And it does that every time the laptop goes to sleep and wakes up. After 30 consecutive sleep-wake up cycles it was using 8Gb of memory. None of the solutions above have worked.

My best quess is that this is part of the same problem like the rest of the Memory Leak problems in macOS Monterey which have now started to appear. MacRumors, MacWorld and DigitalTrends have at least acknowledged this (https://www.macworld.com/article/54...-leaks-m1-macbook-macos-monterey-big-sur.html)



So. Most propably we have to wait for the fix from Apple.
Click to expand...
Ok. This was indeed weird.

I was reading from Apple Support Forums about the memory leakage problem in macOS and found out that a custom colors in mouse pointer can actually cause some memory leakage also. I recalled tweaking my cursor size and border color couple days ago. Even though I had set the cursor to the original size and the cursor border color was indeed the same as the default one, only after resetting 'universalaccessd' has settled to using 7~Mb of memory.

Of course this has not solved the bigger problem with Firefox potentially showing erratic behavior.
 
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Well, I think from reading the above we all can safely conclude that there is a bug related to accessibility settings in the latest Monterey which causes a memory leak.

However, recently updated to
1636374162516.png


And I have both of the settings enabled, and the service is on 7.8mb.

Perhaps it was fixed in 12.1 Beta update? Give it a go guys.
 
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Monterey should be renamed MemoryLeakrey

maybe they sell more 32GB models if every app consumes 5GB RAM ?
 
This is my machine right now:

1637882908663.png


I turned off the "reduce transparency/motion" settings but it didn't appear to help in 12.0.1 on an M1X. I DO however have the zoom accessibility function enabled (I legit need it to see).

So I killed the process and everything was fine. If I zoom the screen in and out a few times, the process size jumps from 60MB to 100, then 300, then 600MB. I zoom back out and do nothing... everything's fine.

Then I start zooming again and the process size starts soaring again. 1GB, 1.6GB, 2.45GB. One single zoom in/out seems to leak between 40 and 150MB of RAM.
 
bogdanw said:
The Easiest Way to (Maybe) Fix macOS Monterey’s Memory Leak Bug https://lifehacker.com/the-easiest-way-to-maybe-fix-macos-monterey-s-memory-1848066964
I gave up on Monterey, so I can't tell if it makes a difference.
Click to expand...
Wow, well done! It turns out I'd forgotten I had fiddled with the color a little bit and the white was off-white, and the size was a scooch bigger than normal. Resetting those and restarting universalaccessd returned it to normal behavior. Now 6.9 MB and holding! (Works in Monterey). I also restarted all the other apps that had ballooned unreasonable and they're doing fine now too.
 
cryohellinc said:
Hi all,

Currently on M1 Mac Monterey 12 Beta (21A5534d)

universalaccessd seems to have very high memory usage. Sometimes it goes all the way to 9gb.

View attachment 1877642

What is the cause of this? Sometimes I just manually go and kill the process. But it keeps coming back. Any suggestions how to battle this?

Thank you!
Click to expand...
Universalaccessd is caused by Transparency Appearance under "accessibility.... when you have Transparency mode appearance on its utilizes more cpu & battery life I noted.
 
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