I’m currently in pain, and Apple is causing it as usual.
My current internet connection has limited bandwidth, and Mac OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite has decided that it wants to make good use of the bandwidth when I am not even touching the computer. There have been discussions on the internet about this, of course. The main culprit seems to be a process with the menacing name nsurlsessiond. It is Apple software. It is legit. It is hell.
To see what causes background network activity one can launch Activity Monitor, click on the Network tab and sort by the Rcvd Bytes column.
What causes that particular process to devour the internet is not certain, but here are some suspects and possible fixes:
Photos. If you sync Photos, stop doing it, and they will not sync photos in the background. They will also be deleted from your Mac, but did you really think they were worth keeping? Apple doesn’t think so.
iCloud. Don’t use iCloud and it will not use any bandwidth.
This means that you do not get any benefit of all the iCloud setup you already have done. You will also lose access to data you have uploaded.
One person simply removed "/usr/libexec/nsusrlsessiond" after having made a backup of it. I suspect that causes all kinds of other problems, so I would not recommend anyone to do it except on test machines.
One person made a trivial shell script to stop nsurlsessiond:
#!/bin/sh
launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nsurlstoraged.plist
launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.nsurlsessiond.plist
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nsurlsessiond.plist
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nsurlstoraged.plist
That probably also causes secondary problems, but they should go away with the next reboot, when nsurlsessiond will be reactivated.
There is a program called Little Snitch, which apparently can help limiting network connections.
One person has suggested to disable ”Spotlight suggestions" and "Bing Web Searches" in System Preferences > Spotlight. Personally I think that is a very unlikely culprit, but who knows? When Apple is out to inflict pain on its users, they can use very devious methods.
App Store may download updates in the background. To disable this, go to System Preferences > App Store. Disable everything.
If you have an iOS device, like an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, they may have switched on the Backup feature without telling you. This will not only choke your bandwidth, but it will also fill up your iCloud storage, so Apple can fool you into buying more storage than you actually need. To switch it off, go to Settings > iCloud > Backup.
If this post helps at least one frustrated Apple user, it was not written in vain.
My current internet connection has limited bandwidth, and Mac OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite has decided that it wants to make good use of the bandwidth when I am not even touching the computer. There have been discussions on the internet about this, of course. The main culprit seems to be a process with the menacing name nsurlsessiond. It is Apple software. It is legit. It is hell.
To see what causes background network activity one can launch Activity Monitor, click on the Network tab and sort by the Rcvd Bytes column.
What causes that particular process to devour the internet is not certain, but here are some suspects and possible fixes:
Photos. If you sync Photos, stop doing it, and they will not sync photos in the background. They will also be deleted from your Mac, but did you really think they were worth keeping? Apple doesn’t think so.
iCloud. Don’t use iCloud and it will not use any bandwidth.
This means that you do not get any benefit of all the iCloud setup you already have done. You will also lose access to data you have uploaded.
One person simply removed "/usr/libexec/nsusrlsessiond" after having made a backup of it. I suspect that causes all kinds of other problems, so I would not recommend anyone to do it except on test machines.
One person made a trivial shell script to stop nsurlsessiond:
#!/bin/sh
launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nsurlstoraged.plist
launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.nsurlsessiond.plist
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nsurlsessiond.plist
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nsurlstoraged.plist
That probably also causes secondary problems, but they should go away with the next reboot, when nsurlsessiond will be reactivated.
There is a program called Little Snitch, which apparently can help limiting network connections.
One person has suggested to disable ”Spotlight suggestions" and "Bing Web Searches" in System Preferences > Spotlight. Personally I think that is a very unlikely culprit, but who knows? When Apple is out to inflict pain on its users, they can use very devious methods.
App Store may download updates in the background. To disable this, go to System Preferences > App Store. Disable everything.
If you have an iOS device, like an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, they may have switched on the Backup feature without telling you. This will not only choke your bandwidth, but it will also fill up your iCloud storage, so Apple can fool you into buying more storage than you actually need. To switch it off, go to Settings > iCloud > Backup.
If this post helps at least one frustrated Apple user, it was not written in vain.
