Why are peopled and CallHistorySyncHelper using so much CPU all the time?

[Wolfpup]

I looked up peopled, and I can guess what CallHistorySyncHelper does, but why do they always seem to be using so much CPU?

I just got an M5 MacBook Air...which, by the way, can handle handbrake at settings that are INSANE compared to my 2015 Windows PC. And I leave it in low power mode because it stays cooler!

But why does it always seem to be chewing up a full CPU (presumably an efficiency core) running those?

And also, my understanding is that the % CPU is the percent of one CPU, not for the whole system like Windows, but then at the bottom it lists what I'm guessing IS a 100%=the entire system?

 

[benholt]

Both are iCloud sync daemons — peopled handles Contacts (also syncs against CardDAV, Exchange, Google if you have any of those added), and CallHistorySyncHelper mirrors your iPhone's call log across via CloudKit. On a freshly signed-in Mac they can chew a full efficiency core for hours doing the initial backfill and dedup passes. Two things worth checking: how many contacts you actually have across all sources combined (peopled gets ugly around duplicates), and how much iPhone call history is in iCloud — if you've been an iCloud user for years, that's a lot to pull down locally. They should mostly go quiet once the initial sync catches up.

On the Activity Monitor question, %CPU is per-core, so 100% on your M5 Air = one full core (either E or P). The CPU history graph at the bottom is the system total across all cores, which is why the two views don't line up.