What is the 'launchd' Process on Mac

The 'launchd' process is one of the core services of the Mac system and it is one of the first daemons to be launched on system boot. It starts immediately after the kernel - the Unix core of the macOS, and is designated with a ProcessID (PID) of 1 or 0. It is responsible for determining which other daemons to load and run. Launchd is always running in the background of the system, as it ensures that services are still running, intervenes to stop them when necessary and launches additional services. In short, your Mac system will be unable to function without it. 

The launchd process can begin to take up an abnormal amount of system resources rarely. To check if CPU cycles and memory consumed by the process, you can use the Activity Monitor utility. First, open your Applications folder followed by Utilities. Once there, find Activity Monitor and launch it. To sort the active processes according to the CPU cycles they take up, click on the CPU column header. The launchd process should be at the bottom of the list normally, as it requires minimal system resources. However, if that is not the case, and launchd is using a lot of resources - 30%-40% of the CPU, you can try restarting your Mac system to resolve the issue.