What is boswatcher?

boswatcher works alongside bosreporter as part of macOS boot and shutdown diagnostics.

What is boswatcher?

boswatcher stands for Boot/OS watcher. While bosreporter gathers and reports boot and shutdown data, boswatcher watches the boot and shutdown process as it happens, looking for problems in real time.

What does it watch for?

boswatcher watches for:

• Stalled or slow boot stages
• Shutdown hangs (when a process will not quit)
• Surprise restarts or crashes during boot
• Oddities in the startup sequence

If something goes wrong during boot or shutdown, boswatcher captures diagnostic details that can help Apple or a technician work out what happened.

How is it different from bosreporter?

boswatcher is the live monitor. It watches events as they happen. bosreporter is the reporter. It packages the gathered data and handles sending it to Apple analytics (if turned on).

Does it use many resources?

No. It runs during boot and shutdown to watch those processes and uses very few resources during normal use.

Should you worry?

No. It is a normal macOS diagnostic process that helps make sure your Mac boots and shuts down properly.

Enjoyed this post?

Well, you could share the post with others, follow me with RSS Feeds and/or send me a comment via email.

Tags