ow to resolve 'BackgroundShortcutRunner' CPU hogging issue on 2020 MacBook Pro running macOS 26.1 Tahoe?

First: Did you confirm in Activity Monitor that this process was actually using that much CPU?

Second: if it is indeed using this much CPU, select it in the Activity Monitor and force quit it - press the X button at the top, and click the Force Quit button.

What happens then? It may be that the process is spawn again, but behaves; that it is spawn and again takes a lot of CPU; or it is not spawn back at all.

Third: in case there is some conflict causing this, Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

You may want to post that Etrecheck report for others to take a look.

As far as I can tell, this was experienced by a small number of users, so there is no reason to expect it to be an overall bug. Shortcuts are not supposed to be running all the time.

It is far more likely to be something specific to the affected users' system setups. Maybe it is a badly behaved shortcut or some third party software modification - and that's why looking at the Etrecheck report may provide other clues.

FWIW, I do not even have a "BackgroundShortcutRunner" process running on my mac, according to Activity Monitor, except when an actual shortcut IS running.

So my take on this is thus: you probably have something that triggered a shortcut, this shortcut was badly behaved and kept running for a looooong time.

I must apologize this is macOS Sequoia, not Tahoe. I have (1) running in background, the Weather app. Otherwise I have nothing else running. This process is an Apple problem. Apple is aware of it. after I login to my acct It takes 30 seconds for my dock and wallpaper to reappear, then I takes about 5-6 minutes to get my iMac to be fully functional like normal.

The report does mention BackgroundShortcutRunner as using a lot of resources.

It is odd that it does not register in Activity Monitor.

When you say "Apple is aware", do you mean you reported it to feedback? Has Apple issued any statement about the issue?

I noticed this strange thing in the report. It is strange due to this long name and, mostly, because the mount point is extremely unusual - instead of being under /Volumes, it is under /System/Library.

    disk4s1 - Creedence11M6270.SECUREPKITRUSTSTOREASSETS_SECUREPKITRUSTSTORE_Cryptex
        Filesystem: APFS
        Disk Image
        Mount point: /System/Library/A******2/c*********************************e/p**********o/6********************************************t/.********a
        Read-only: Yes
        Size: 4 MB

Did you test in Safe Mode, to see if this happens there too?

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

The report does mention BackgroundShortcutRunner as using a lot of resources.

It is odd that it does not register in Activity Monitor.

It may be considered a system process which is hidden from view by default...only user processes are shown by default.

I noticed this strange thing in the report. It is strange due to this long name and, mostly, because the mount point is extremely unusual - instead of being under /Volumes, it is under /System/Library.

disk4s1 - Creedence11M6270.SECUREPKITRUSTSTOREASSETS_SECUREPKITRUSTSTORE_Cryptex

Filesystem: APFS

Disk Image

Mount point: /System/Library/A******2/c*********************************e/p**********o/6********************************************t/.********a

Read-only: Yes

Size: 4 MB

I've seen a lot of users on this forum report having the virtual drive mounted in the Finder (I believe it started with Sequoia). This virtual volume is part of macOS and for some reason some people see it in the Finder. I have no idea why it is is visible, but it is a macOS bug for not unmounting it. I see virtual volumes remain mounted after creating a bootable macOS USB installer for Tahoe. Apple is dropping the ball.

From EtreCheck report:

    2025-10-18 Bitdefender Virus Scanner (3.18) - App Store

    2025-11-18 OS Cleaner Pro (13.6.26) - App Store

These two items you had installed may have done something to corrupt the system. While the system files themselves cannot be modified, there are system related files that may have been modified or corrupted.

Anti-virus apps, cleaning/optimizer apps, and third party security software are not needed on a Mac. These types of apps usually cause more problems than they solve because they interfere with macOS at a very low level where they can cause the most problems & damage.

Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community

Clear Shortcuts containers

Disable automations

Remove Siri suggestions

Kill the daemon periodically

Create an empty (“placeholder”) Shortcut

Turn off iCloud Shortcuts sync

That's how I found out in my case. this process is hogging the CPU. Is Apple have any intentions on fixing it. I used Etrecheck to isolate problem.

I problem is there is no shortcut running, In activity monitor I don't even see this process at all.