QuickLookSatellite MAC OS, High CPU Use

macos macbook-pro cpu-usage macbook osx-mountain-lion

I have consistently been having a problem with my computer overheating due to the process QuickLookSatellite-general using 100+ CPU use. (Please see images attached.)

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On googling I found this process is associated with Draftsight, a CAD program. I do not and have never had this program installed.

Restarting does not even fix this problem. I am also worried about damaging my Macbook at such high CPU temperatures.

Any assistance is appreciated.


Troubleshooting steps:

  • See if there are any relevant log messages in Console.app or /var/log/system.log.
  • Use qlmanage -r to reset Quick Look client's generator cache.
  • Run sudo opensnoop -n QuickLookSatellite-general to see if the process hangs after accessing some specific files. Or select QuickLookSatellite-general in Activity Monitor, press command-I, and see the Open Files and Ports tab.
  • Temporarily delete Movie.qlgenerator, Audio.qlgenerator, or other qlgenerator bundles in /System/Library/QuickLook, and run qlmanage -r.
  • Temporarily remove applications shown by qlmanage -p | grep /Applications/.
  • Disable quicklookd with launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.quicklook.*. The plists are loaded again after you log out and back in.

If nothing else works, you could try doing an upgrade install of OS X from the recovery partition.


What I also found helpful was to turn on QuickLook debugging so I could see exactly what files were being processed. You can do that with this in the terminal. More info in the Mac Developer Library. 

defaults write -g QLEnableLogging YES

You can also adjust the debugging level using qlmanage -d debuglevel. Run qlmanage -h for more info.

In my particular case it was QuickSilver causing the issue, which I fixed by disabling image previews using this command in the terminal. My thread on that is here.

defaults write com.blacktree.quicksilver "QSLoadImagePreviews" NO

Also see this similar AskDifferent question.

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