What is the cloudd Process on Mac?
Trying to find more about your Mac's performance and background services may often reveal the names of processes you have not encountered before. One of the questions that users often ask is what is the cloudd process on Mac? The first thing to say is that there is nothing to worry about about when you see this process. It is a legitimate component of macOS, and it is part of the CloudKid framework that Apple uses for the iCloud service. Whenever you use any of iCloud's services, you may see a spike in the hardware resources that the cloudd process uses.
The cloudd Mac process is a part of Apple iCloud
If you have not used iCloud's sync before and you turn it on for the first time, then you are more than likely to experience high CPU, disk, and RAM usage by the cloudd component. The good news is that this is a one-time occurrence – after this it will only happen periodically, when your Mac is syncing small files.
One application that may cause problems with the cloudd component is Parallels Desktop. This virtual machine software uses your Mac's Documents folder to store information. However, the same directory is being synced actively by iCloud, and this may result in cloudd using excessive resources continuously. The easiest way to fix this issue is to reconfigure Parallels Desktop to use an alternative directory. Alternatively, you can also remove Parallels through our guide on How to Uninstall Parallels.
If you still experience problems, then you should take some extra troubleshooting steps:
- Check your Internet connection – connectivity issues may cause iCloud to hang, forcing cloudd to stay active for longer than necessary.
- Restart your device and see if it fixes the problem.
- Stop iCloud's synchronization temporarily.
- Limit the folders and files that iCloud synchronizes.
