Docker for mac uses over 100% cpu while doing nothing 

published 04 April 2020

I use a docker for mac which has some performance problems. But it seems the interface in the background might also have some flaws.

Today I started my mac back up after it crashed because of catalina awesome stability when it comes to external monitors and had my fans running while i haven’t started anything yet. I looked into the my processes and…

The thing is, I haven’t done anything with docker yet… and normally it is hyperkit that uses 100% cpu.

So I ran the kill -STOP command to pause Docker:

kill -STOP $(pgrep Docker) # searches and pauses the "Docker" process
kill -CONT $(pgrep Docker) # searches and resumes the "Docker" process

and what happened? The docker command still runs fine, I can start projects without any problems. So what have I stopped?

Well apparently I stopped the the interface… You know, that thing that you use once to increase the docker vm memory and to restart the docker server.

So apparently you need to keep an eye out for it and when it happens, just pause the interface indefinitely until MacOS crashes again.

Edits