VS Code - Code Helper process using more than 100% CPU on macOS

This is most likely an issue with a plugin in VS Code. For me, it was Pyright.

How to check?

• Open Activity Monitor
• Within the list of prcesses, find the one that has the highest CPU usage (it should already be at the top).
• For this process, find the PID number.

• Then, within terminal, type this:

  ps aux | grep 20295

• note that you should change "20295" to the PID number that you found in step 3

This should give you the information as to which extension it is. I, personally, would remove it, but that's up to you. At the very least, please contact the maintainer of that package and make sure that they are aware of the issue.

After removing the extension, exit VS Code, wait for a bit while the fans slow down and then start again. It shouldn't give you a problem now.

Happy coding!

The behaviour you describe could either be a bug in VS Code or it is intended behaviour simply because the numbers of files you have require large amounts of CPU time to process. I strongly suspect that the problem is a bug.

The issue you have found have the same externally observables as your problem, i.e. the CPU usage of Code Helper is very high. However there could be many different reasons for that to happen. Therefore it is not a problem that that specific issue has been closed for outside comments.

I would highly suggest opening a new issue instead. Go to this page:

https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues

And click the "New issue" button. Select that you want to file a "Bug report". Then please describe everything carefully, including which of the recommendations you have tried that did not work.

Hopefully the VSCode team will be able to fix the bug and release a new and fixed version.

For React Native developers, try adding the expo folder in the vscode configuration to the "files.watcherExclude" . There are too many large files in that folder and its cache folder.

{
  **/node_modules/**,
  **/.expo/**
}

I have a markdown file within LaTeX which caused the Code Helper process to consume 100% of CPU resources.

I checked the extensions and noticed that, when I disable the Markdown+Math extension, CPU usage goes down immediately.

I use the Markdown+Math extension to preview markdown files within LaTeX. I uninstalled the extension, and use now "Markdown Preview Enhanced".