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Hi All,

Since installing macOS Sierra dev beta I noticed high CPU (constant 20-30%) usage by com.apple.AmbientDisplayAgent. In console I've noticed many many errors of "Read hardware overrides for display". Tried re-boot, tried SMC/PRAM reset, tried to kill the process etc etc, no change.

I tried to find a solution, however the only think I can figure out is a more heavy handed method of renaming the com.apple.AmbientDisplayAgent.xpc to avoid it loading until I can find another solution.

Here are the steps just in case you need this:

1 - You need to disable System Integrity Protection for a few minutes, first boot into recovery mode | shut down your Mac, hold down Command+R, then press the power button

2 - Once your machine boots into recovery mode (may take 3 minutes or so) choose terminal from the menu (from memory it's the first menu, last option), type "csrutil disable" (without the quotes) to disable SIP

3 - Type reboot to start your machine up again

4 - Using either terminal or finder rename the following file
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AmbientDisplay.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.AmbientDisplayAgent.xpc
to
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AmbientDisplay.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.AmbientDisplayAgent_old.xpc

5 - Repeat step 1 to re-enter recovery mode & enable SIP again by typing "csrutil enable" (once again without the quotes)

Hope this helps if you are also seeing high CPU that is impacting battery & don't forget to reverse the above process once the issue is fixed.