What are the coredisplay and corestorage processes?

2013-08-19 17:00

coredisplay and corestorage processes handle displays and storage at a system level.

What is coredisplay?

coredisplay processes manage the display system on macOS. They handle resolution, display arrangement, colour profiles, and the link between the GPU and the screen hardware. They step in when you plug in an outside display, change resolution, or rearrange screens.

What is corestorage?

corestorage processes manage Core Storage volumes. Core Storage was Apple's volume manager before APFS. It handled:

FileVault encryption on HFS+ volumes
Fusion Drive (joining an SSD and a hard drive into one volume)
Logical volume management

On modern Macs running APFS, Core Storage does far less, since APFS handles encryption and volume management on its own. You may still see corestorage processes on Macs upgraded from older macOS versions or those still using HFS+ volumes.

Do they use many resources?

coredisplay is light and event-driven. corestorage does very little on APFS systems.

Should you worry?

No. They are standard macOS processes for display and storage management.

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