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What is sharingd on a Mac? AirDrop, Handoff and Universal Clipboard

sharingd runs AirDrop, Handoff and Universal Clipboard. It used 16 MB and no CPU on our Mac. Why it spikes, and how to restart it when AirDrop stalls.

4 min read

What is sharingd?

sharingd handles the features that pass things between your devices: AirDrop, Handoff, Universal Clipboard and parts of AirPlay and sharing settings. It lives at /usr/libexec/sharingd and runs as you. On our Mac it used 0.0% CPU and 16 MB.

Why is sharingd using CPU?

  • An AirDrop transfer in progress, especially a large one.
  • AirDrop set to Everyone, which keeps the Mac looking for and answering nearby devices.
  • Universal Clipboard copying something large between devices.

AirDrop or Handoff stopped working

Restart sharingd; macOS starts it again straight away:

killall sharingd

If that does not help, turn Bluetooth and Wi-Fi off and on, since both are needed. Files received by AirDrop land in Downloads; see AirDrop received files.

Device to device connections underneath are handled by rapportd.

See it live

Free Mac's System tab ranks every process by processor use and energy impact, once a second, and marks the ones macOS will not let you quit as protected. See also bluetoothd.

Related: fileproviderd and corespotlightd high CPU.

Common questions

What is sharingd on a Mac?

The macOS process behind AirDrop, Handoff and Universal Clipboard.

How do I restart sharingd?

Run killall sharingd in Terminal. macOS restarts it automatically.

Why is sharingd using CPU?

An AirDrop transfer, AirDrop set to Everyone, or a large Universal Clipboard copy.

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