I have successfully worked for 2 days without having DisplayLink Manager going to 150% CPU resulting in WindowServer blowing up by uninstalling display link and using a friends little dock for dual displays. Seems this is more reliable than displaylink and is relatively portable. No further issues of high CPU and fans turning on so far in 2 days which simply has not happened with DisplayLink since I completely reinstalled Mojave. Seems that this is the best way to resolve given lack of response from Displaylink.

So in short, fresh clean install of Mojave and displaylink results in high CPU utilisation on Displaylink Manager and also WindowsServer. Unplugging the DisplayLink dock sees the DisplayLink Manager CPU usage go away but WindowServer remains high. You need to reboot twice to recover WindowServer for some reason. Logs sent to Displaylink. No response.

Solution: replace displaylink dock.

Sadly the issue returned.

I've trashed Mojave again and reinstalled office and a few minor other applications. Without DisplayLink installed and at 17:39:26 each day the WindowServer process goes high CPU to approximately 40% and remains there until 18:10.

I suspect that with Displaylink Drivers installed the problem is more pronounced because of the fact that I think the Drivers are trying to stay in sync with the DisplayServer. This means that the DisplayLink Drivers hit about 140-160% CPU while WindowServer hits 40%. Heats the MAC like no tomorrow.

I've been trying to get to the bottom of what is happening but appears that something sets the kernel off and it says that it is flipping the Display. The logs for this vary between occurring every 20ms to far less than.that. I've got a message over at Apple Communities but absolutely no responses at all. Its getting detailed. Last resort is back to High Sierra and surrender on Mojave to see if the problem goes away. This does not seem like a Displaylink issue but it is the obvious visible impact.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250645982

I've spent many hours at this and trying to address what the problem is.

To cut a long story short, after discussions with Apple over the fact that the DisplayServer in 10.14.6 18G95 apparently gets confused and generates large amounts of kernel DisplayBuffer Logging trying to switch between display resolutions of the same resolution (see previous link) apple suggested disabling Night Shift.

Its only been 1 day but yesterday is the first day where my MAC has not ran WindowServer at high CPU utilisation early in the morning or late in the afternoon.

At a guess here, it appears that there may be a bug in 18G95 where the OS is attempting to perform Night Shift on the external Monitor and is falling for some reason. The OS continues to try for 30 minutes from my experience. During this timeframe you can stop, reboot the MAC and the high CPU utilisation continues. If you look in the syslog (log show --debug) you can see the kernel logging messages about switching resolution and the time difference between these messages vary from sub millisecond logs to in the early teens.

With DisplayLink Drivers loaded this problem appears to be associated with Displaylink as it consumed approximately 3x the CPU than the windowServer process. I'd have a guess and say this is because of all the proposed resolution switches being attempted by the kernel.So Displaylink goes to 120-160% CPU utilisation and WindowServer goes to 35-40%.

I have my fingers crossed that the disabling of the night shift holds for the coming days. However, I'll also be feeding the outcomes back to Apple as I do use the feature and would like to see a working Catalina.

Hope that may assist others. Cross the fingers. I can say reinstalling 18G95 did not change anything in my experience.

With NightShift turned off I have had 2 days without High CPU issues on WindowServer process (and subequently the 100% CPU utilisation by DisplayLink). Seems that Apple is correct and they have broken the NightShift process on 18G95. Server me right for installing the supplementary updates.

No patch expected from Apple on Mojave. Catalina is a hope they may fix it.

Try disabling Night Shift
 

I had this problem and discovered that disabling Night Shift made it go away. Presumably there is some bug in the driver that is tickled by that, although clearly that may not be the only cause. YMMV.

I'm experiencing the same thing with the same results when you disable Night Shift on Mojave 10.14.16 and with the

5.2.1 beta 3 DL drivers installed. Disable Night Shift -> DisplayLinkManager CPU usage drops from around 100% to around 4 ~ 8%

Some colleagues have upgraded to Catalina 10.15.1 and suggest in general to wait, without focusing on DisplayLinkManager and CPU usage, just in general to wait with updating to Catalina. So that's what I'll be doing (crashed and burned before :D)

High DL CPU usage continues to be an issue
 

I'm running Catalina with DL 4.3 "GA" drivers and I continue to have issues, including very high CPU (eg DL drivers consuming 100% of one of my CPUs on a pretty constant basis), and as I just discovered, DL drivers are also causing all of my Java apps to crash.

As a result I have removed the DL adapters from my system and am using a Rube Goldberg mix of usb-c display adapters. My system is happily running at 8% CPU and my Java apps are working as well.

As far as my $200 Targus boat anchor? I hope to be able to use it (and the embedded DisplayLink hardware) again someday soon.