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.
16 comments:
While I appreciate all the technical info (saved me some time figuring out the same — thanks) I do take issue with the characterization that Apple is 'out to inflict pain on its users' or that Apple is trying to 'fool you into buying more storage that you actually need.' I haven't seen anything that would indicate that and I generally think it wouldn't help their business plan. Their whole goal is to make things 'just work' with the least amount of effort on their users. There's really only two ways to do this: automated systems using rulesets based on what they think their users generally want or make users responsible for all that work. The latter just doesn't work. My household has 6 iDevices. I'm the only one that routinely plugs it in to a computer via wifi or cable. The other people here routinely put their device in airplane mode when cabled to power at night (thus defeating wifi-based iTunes backup as well) so getting any kind of backup done is a struggle. They have no patience for good systems management because it gets in the way of just using the device to do what they want. When I can remember, I go in to Settings>iCloud>Storage>Manage Storage>iPhone and selectively enable/disable which apps data gets backed up and that helps some but, frankly, just letting everything autobackup to iCloud makes recovery and upgrades so much easier that 50GB for $11.88 a year is worth it. Even the $35.88/yr for 200GB for storage and web-based access is worth it to me. I still make local backups but I don't need to double my backups, rotating offsite disks, etc.
If you spend more than 5 minutes a week doing any kind of management of all your devices in aggregate, you're only saving money if you work for less than minimum wage. If you make more than $10/hr and you spend more than 4 minutes a week you're wasting your time. Unless, of course, you enjoy that sort of thing.
That is all well and good as long as Apple puts an "off" switch somewhere! Nobody going through the pain nsurlsessiond is inflicting on me at the moment wants to hear any of what you're saying right now. Trust that.
Quidam is right in pointing out the other side from the (very informative, thanks you!) message of Magus.
I think a lot of people are interested in that side, not only the standard "flaming Apple" without knowing the actual "Why"
I had to log out of iCloud to stop the pain. This was the only solution I could find. I am an Apple fanatic... but this heavy data usage was just killing my cap. Not all of us live in a country with uncapped access.
I, too, live in a country that does not have the "unlimited" "free" internet that those in the West are accustomed to. I hail the idea that FB had to create a lite version of messenger. We need such things for all programs. Putting it another way, Sierra is a free download, that will cost me 20USD to download because it is 5 GB and won't work the first time.
While total data limit isn't the problem, nsurlsessiond maxes out my upload bandwidth (300 kB/s) and the whole home network is unable to use the internet. I appreciate the benefits of iCloud, but an option to throttle the bend width used by it, or better still restrict the upload to certain periods of the day would be veyry useful.
I had the same problem on my macbook running El Capitan and solved it by "getting my head out of the cloud" but now my wife's computer is gobbling up the bandwidth and it is nsurlsessiond that is doing it. She is not and has never been, connected to the cloud. I don't know what do do now.
I've just encountered the nsurlsessiond bandwidth hog situation tonight. I've still no idea what the hell it was doing. I suspect Apple may be using that daemon as some kind of distributed processing system and sending over things to be processed by people's Macs and then sending that data back to Apple when it's done. I've just lost all of my trust in Apple with such antics.
Seriously, I have nothing enabled that should use the amount of bandwidth that was being consumed by nsurlsessiond. Apple is using this process for something other than iCloud, but I don't know what it is. If I were really enterprising, I might try to packet capture what the hell is going on with that and snoop at the packets being sent. But, I've already wasted enough time with stupid Appleisms and they're probably using SSL anyway.
I took the permanently-disable-this-daemon approach. If all it does is allegedly serve iCloud, then I'll live with whatever pain it inflicts when this daemon is disabled.
nsurlsessiond was sending hundreds of megabytes per hour, non-stop, until I unchecked "Allow Spotlight Suggestions in Look up" from the Spotlight System Preferences. What nonsense! WTF, Apple?
Remember to uncheck "Spotlight Suggestions" in the Search Results list box!
"If you do not want your Spotlight and Look Up search queries and Spotlight Suggestions usage data sent to Apple, you can turn off Spotlight Suggestions. Simply deselect the checkbox for 'Allow Spotlight Suggestions in Look Up' AND THE CHECKBOX for Spotlight Suggestions in the Search Results tab in the Spotlight preference pane found within System Preferences, Spotlight will only search the contents of your Mac and Look Up will only search the dictionary on your Mac."
Also turn off Location Services for Spotlight Suggestions in the Security & Privacy pane of System Preferences. Click on the Privacy tab, click Details... for System Services. Uncheck "Location-Based Suggestions"
(this applies for Sierra and newer)
agreed. I don't even use an apple computer. my dad does, and nsurlsessiond makes the internet so bad that I can't even watch you tube. For some unknown reason, you cant just turn the fucking program off.
Do some research on X86 devices. You'll find that there are no programs that use excessive bandwidth that you can't turn off, there are no fees for cloud usage, and, with a little getting used to, it's just as easy to use as apple devices. Windows also offers a lot more versatility with programs like blender running much smoother on windows than mac os, and there being many more programs that you can't even use on mac.
My advice is to start using programs like google drive and google photos. These programs only upload the information you tell them to, and won't kill you data cap. Also, windows devices don't even have a program like nsurlsessiond
This is bull. I have spent hours, literally hours, trying to figure out how to stop this nsurlsessiond from coming on time and time again. Woke up this morning, it's on again. My late 2012 MacBook Pro is hot as all get out. The fan is blasting. My system is bogged down...again. Everyday I go through this. It is bull and Apple needs to fix it.
Your fanboy comments ain't helping.
@Auktavius , brother.. this might help, it surely helped me ... https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251258165?answerId=252448239022#252448239022
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