"Too many processes" warning -- potential causes and solutions

Duplicate processes Some applications or system components/add-ons can inadvertently spawn multiple duplicate processes, quickly ratcheting the system or user toward the maximum amount.

As described in our tutorial "Increasing performance by quitting remnant or unnecessary system processes," you can use Activity Monitor to seek out and kill duplicate processes by launching the application, clicking on the Process Name to organize items alphabetically, then looking for items with the exact same name.

Google Desktop Google Desktop has been identified as a potential cause of this issue, as it sometimes spawns multiple mdimport processes -- used by Spotlight and similarly functioning applications (like Google Desktop) to import file hierarchies into the metadata datastore. To deal with this proble, you can either kill the duplicate mdimport processes as aforementioned or uninstall Google Desktop.

Widgets Errant widgets can spawn multiple DashboardClient processes, chewing up irregularly large amounts of processor resources.

DashboardClient processes are created by Widgets, which operate under Dashboard. As such, there is generally no problem with having multiple DashboardClient, or (name of widget) DashboardClient processes extant. The trouble occurs when an errant Widget begins spawning several of these processes, or when one or more of the processes needlessly uses a large amount of processor time.

In some cases, this issue can be resolved by temporarily removing any third-party Widgets that might be culpable. Look in the following directories:

• ~/Library/Widgets
• /Library/Widgets

move third-party items out, then restart.

Alternatively, you can use the freeware utility Widget Manager to inspect, remove, and disable Dashboard Widgets.

Sometimes just restarting the Dock suffices. This can be accomplished by opening Activity Monitor (located in Applications/Utilities) and looking for the Dock process, then clicking the Quit Process button. This will end all currently running Widget processes, which will not be re-activated until you again click the Dashboard icon and re-display active Widgets.

Changing the maximum number of processes One straightforward method for dealing with this issue is to change the maximum number of processes allowed by the system and per each user id.

To find out the current setting for maximum processes for the entire system, open the Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities) and enter the following command:

• sysctl kern.maxproc

To find out the current setting for maximum processes per user, enter the following command in the Terminal:

• sysctl kern.maxprocperuid

To set the maximum number of processes for the system, enter the following command in the Terminal:

• sudo sysctl -w kern.maxproc=1000
(where 1000 can be replaced by your desired figure)

To set the maximum number of processes per user, enter the following command in the Terminal:

• sudo sysctl -w kern.maxprocperuid=500
(where 500 can be replaced by your desired figure)

These setting will only stick until the next restart, however.

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