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mediaanalysisd, photoanalysisd and photolibraryd

jasnw

jasnw

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 15, 2013
1,067
1,140
Seattle Area (NOT! Microsoft)
Ever since I updated to 14.7.2 these three daemons have been jumping in to run every time I don't actively interact with the computer for some period of time. After lots of googling I still am unsure as to what the blickety these things are doing. As usual, finding any official Apple explanation that's of any use is right out. Given the mindless focus on gathering content for AI by our Tech Bro overlords I am getting a bit paranoid about anything called "analysis" that's running constantly on my, as in MY, computer. Anyone know what these things are really doing, and if there are any ways for mere computer owners to control them? Or is the concept that you own your computer so last decade?
 
Apple manual (man photoanalysisd in Terminal):

“photoanalysisd – The macOS photo library analysis agent.
photoanalysisd is the photo library analysis agent. It handles background processing of photo libraries for Memories, People and scene or object based search.”

“photolibraryd – The macOS photo library agent.
photolibraryd is the photo library agent. It handles all photo library requests.”

With SIP disabled, mediaanalysisd, photoanalysisd and photolibraryd can be disabled from Terminal:

Code: 
launchctl bootout gui/501/com.apple.mediaanalysisd
launchctl disable gui/501/com.apple.mediaanalysisd

launchctl bootout gui/501/com.apple.photoanalysisd
launchctl disable gui/501/com.apple.photoanalysisd

launchctl bootout gui/501/com.apple.photolibraryd
launchctl disable gui/501/com.apple.photolibraryd

To re-enable

Code: 
launchctl enable gui/501/com.apple.mediaanalysisd

launchctl enable gui/501/com.apple.photoanalysisd

launchctl enable gui/501/com.apple.photolibraryd

and reboot

Apple - Disabling and Enabling System Integrity Protection (SIP)
https://developer.apple.com/documen...ling_and_enabling_system_integrity_protection
 
Revisiting/reframing my question, is there anywhere that documents what these beasts do in terms of what is lost when you turn them off? An example - when I first disabled Spotlight I subsequently discovered that I could not search within the Mail app. Required a lot of wasted hours finding out that Spotlight did the searching for Mail. So, what wheels will fall off when I stop mediaanalysisd, which has no man page?
 
Search for objects in video and photos won't work anymore.

For example searching "cat" won't show anymore all the video (with timestamps highlighted) and photos that contains cats.
 
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galad said:
Search for objects in video and photos won't work anymore.

For example searching "cat" won't show anymore all the video (with timestamps highlighted) and photos that contains cats.
Click to expand...

This.

Just let them run otherwise you'll lose the search functionality in photos, etc. Which you may not need very often but when you're looking for something specific in your photo library its quite convenient!
 
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bogdanw said:
Free alternative for photo search:
PicArrange https://apps.apple.com/app/picarrange/id1530678223
“Search for images by using a textual description (macOS 12 and higher, Apple silicon)”
Thread started by the developer “PicArrange 3.0 - Find your images on a Mac with words (now in App Store)” https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...on-a-mac-with-words-now-in-app-store.2433189/
Click to expand...
I've used this app on some fairly large libraries of images and it has worked very well.
 
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jasnw said:
Ever since I updated to 14.7.2 these three daemons have been jumping in to run every time I don't actively interact with the computer for some period of time. After lots of googling I still am unsure as to what the blickety these things are doing. As usual, finding any official Apple explanation that's of any use is right out. Given the mindless focus on gathering content for AI by our Tech Bro overlords I am getting a bit paranoid about anything called "analysis" that's running constantly on my, as in MY, computer. Anyone know what these things are really doing, and if there are any ways for mere computer owners to control them? Or is the concept that you own your computer so last decade?
Click to expand...
Having same issue since 14.7.2. Oddly I used to have this issue on older OS's and hit had gone away. Now it is back with a vengeance with 14.7.2.
 
nottooshabby said:
Having same issue since 14.7.2. Oddly I used to have this issue on older OS's and hit had gone away. Now it is back with a vengeance with 14.7.2.
Click to expand...
Yep, same here. mediaanalysisd and photoanalysisd are preventing Jettison from ejecting my media drives on sleep. Yet another example of Apple not testing/knowing what they're doing.
 
Anyone know of a way to determine how long or how far it is in scanning all the photos? Every time I use my Mac for the last week, the fan is ramped up and 1 core is at 100%...really annoying to listen to...Disabling SIP to do the steps above it is kind of a pain, so I would rather not do it if it will finish in another day or two.
 
nottooshabby said:
Having same issue since 14.7.2. Oddly I used to have this issue on older OS's and hit had gone away. Now it is back with a vengeance with 14.7.2.
Click to expand...

Did you check if re-indexing after an update may be an issue for your Mac?

nottooshabby said:
Anyone know of a way to determine how long or how far it is in scanning all the photos? Every time I use my Mac for the last week, the fan is ramped up and 1 core is at 100%...really annoying to listen to...Disabling SIP to do the steps above it is kind of a pain, so I would rather not do it if it will finish in another day or two.
Click to expand...

What does your Activity Monitor show for the [mediaanalysisd, photoanalysisd and photolibraryd] processes? Any Temperature Readings you're worried about? Perhaps share a screencap?
 
I don’t use Photos except for some minor shared albums. Fewer than 100 images. The photo side never-the-less took days. Not a paragon of efficiency. My media drive has about 6tb of video. It’s been about a week and it’s still going. Who knows.
 
m4v3r1ck said:
Did you check if re-indexing after an update may be an issue for your Mac?



What does your Activity Monitor show for the [mediaanalysisd, photoanalysisd and photolibraryd] processes? Any Temperature Readings you're worried about? Perhaps share a screencap?
Click to expand...
It's been showing 100% for photoanalysisd. I actually updated to 14.7.3 Saturday morning, then set my computer to not sleep and it looks like either 14.7.3 fixed the issue or it was able to finish all the indexing in the last 24+ hours. Temp readings were around 60C instead of the usual 35C.
 
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nottooshabby said:
It's been showing 100% for photoanalysisd. I actually updated to 14.7.3 Saturday morning, then set my computer to not sleep and it looks like either 14.7.3 fixed the issue or it was able to finish all the indexing in the last 24+ hours. Temp readings were around 60C instead of the usual 35C.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your feedback.

Updating will eat some resources before it's 100% complete, and all background processes are rerun with the new release. I exclude disks from the Spotlight Index, which are not critical for searching on a daily basis.

If the temp readings are nominal again (35C), you're good to go. I use Macs Fan Control for my temp management on my Macs. Higher temps degrade electronic components faster than is desired by its users.
 
Well it's back with a vengeance after being gone a few days and having my computer shut off. Really annoying.
 
gilby101 said:
Exclude the drive from Spotlight (unless you really need Spotlight to find cat videos).
Click to expand...
You are truly a legend, I have been driving myself crazy battling with killing mediaanalysisd - I don't use the Photo app at all yet it still keeps respawning. Turns out it is crawling my 15000 of photos on my external backup drive (no wonder why it never finish). Excluding everything in Spotlight settings instantly stopped it respawning. No more crontab killing and SIP madness.
 
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N0ne1eft said:
Turns out it is crawling my 15000 of photos on my external backup drive (no wonder why it never finish).
Click to expand...
Indexing photos by content is great (in my view) for working copies of photos (Lightroom in my case) on an SSD. Just needs a bit of patience for the initial index. But is a disaster for backups on HDDs. Apple really should make it obvious that there is little point in such indexing of backups and then make it easier to exclude them. My preference would be for all external disks not be indexed by default and with a simple means to turn it on if wanted.

Glad you have fixed your mediaanalysisd.
 
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