What is DiskUnmountWatcher on Mac?
Kerberos disk unmount watcher · seed · quit hint: usually safe
DiskUnmountWatcher is a macOS process (listed here as Kerberos disk unmount watcher). People usually find it in Activity Monitor when asking “what is this process?”
What does DiskUnmountWatcher do?
DiskUnmountWatcher is a KerberosHelper helper that listens for DiskArbitration disk-disappeared events and releases network-authentication (KerberosHelper) state tied to the vanished volume path. launchd starts it when a volume disappears. You need it so stale Kerberos/network-auth credentials for ejected disks are cleaned up; quitting only skips that cleanup for the current unmount.
Is it safe to quit DiskUnmountWatcher?
Hint: usually safe. SystemWoe Free and Pro use keep-guards so you don’t blindly kill something important — Pro adds force-terminate only with confirmation.
Further reading
- https://github.com/aosm/KerberosHelper/blob/master/com.apple.security.DiskUnmountWatcher.plist
- https://github.com/aosm/KerberosHelper/blob/master/Source/DiskUnmountWatcher.c
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