Distnoted on Mac eats large percent CPU time

disntoted ?

Distnoted:

Via http://www.techradar.com/how-to/computing/apple/ask-what-is-distnoted-on-mac-1305721

Question

I have a Retina MacBook Pro, and I’ve noticed several times a day the laptop suddenly slows to a crawl. Activity Monitor seems to suggest the culprit is something called “distnoted”, which often consumes 100% CPU and 1.5GB of memory. What is this process and how can I get rid of it?

Answer

Distnoted provides “distributed notification services” – we're not sure why it isn’t just called “distnot.” It’s a system process that is normally invisible. Occasionally, it can go a bit haywire. For example, if you use the emacs editor, there’s a bug that indirectly sets distnoted off. Happily, there’s a patch for this here. (If you are using emacs, you might want to disable any anti-virus software, too.) Some people have gone so far as to set up scheduled tasks to automatically kill the distnoted process, but we wouldn’t go to that extreme.

Distnoted is a perfectly benign process, but it can occasionally consume resources and make your Mac slow down.

Distnoted isn’t too critical. Instead, use Activity Monitor to see what apps are running — not just system processes. Quit one app at a time and see if the distnoted activity dies down as well.

I am unable to reproduce, what makes you think this is caused by VLC?

added Status::needs more info label

closed

Distnoted only ramps up when I launch VLC and starts consuming resources. When I quit VLC distnoted stops eating CPU cycles. It only happens with High Sierrra on my Mac laptop. My desktop iMac on 10.11.6 with VLC 2.2.6 does not have this problem. I can take a screenflow capture of this it it helps.

Please try removing the VLC preferences and the cache, restart your Mac and try again.

removed Status::needs more info label

reopened

Thanks! That seemed to do the trick.

Thanks for working on VLC. Love it and use it every day.

Best, Jim

Happy that I could help. I will close the ticket, if it happens again, feel free to reopen and we can investigate further.

added Status::fixed label

closed

Issue came back again a day later. Repeated the process of throwing away the preference files and restarting. Works for a while then the high CPU usage comes back. Immediately after starting VLC without playing anything VLC users 70% of the CPU

Current CPU stats: 75% CPU for VLC 58% CPU for Distnoted

removed Status::fixed label

reopened

Did you change any settings? Do you have a large media library? In case you vlcrc does not contain any sensitive information, could you share it with me?

Replying to [comment:9 ePirat]:

Did you change any settings? Do you have a large media library? In case your vlcrc does not contain any sensitive information, could you share it with me?

vlcrc

Added attachment:

vlcrc

No setting changes. Only stream audio, nothing in my library other than 5-6 links to streaming sites