contactsdctl.sh

#!/bin/bash

# This is a tool to control contactsd on macOS. For some reason, contactsd
# consumes a lot of CPU when running against my (large, 9,779 entry)
# addressbook. I think contactsd is responsible for synchronizing the
# addressbook in the background, but it makes my local instance of the Contacts
# app hang and burns up my battery. So I stop contactsd when I use the Contacts
# app and then restart it to allow the sync to happen. However, modern macOS
# will not allow one to stop the contactsd launch agent to be disabled. System
# Integrity Protection will not allow one to disable it. So what I really do is
# send the process a SIGSTOP signal to make it hang. Then I just restart it
# when I really want to start it.

case $1 in

  start)
    echo "starting contactsd"
    launchctl stop com.apple.contactsd && launchctl start com.apple.contactsd
    ;;

  stop)
    echo "stopping contactsd"

    # Get the PID of the running contactds process
    CPID=$(launchctl list |grep com.apple.contactsd|cut -d$'\t' -f1)

    # Send a SIGSTOP to the process to hang it. If we kill it, launchd will
    # just restart it.
    kill -SIGSTOP $CPID
    ;;

  *)
    echo "unknown command:" $1
    echo "use start or stop"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac