After upgrading, process AMPLibraryAgent is taking up 100% of CPU

Pull up a terminal window and type in "man -k AMPLibraryAgent". Man is the built-in manual or help pages and -k means do a keyword search. So you are asking your Mac if it knows of any help pages that refer to or are called AMPLibraryAgent and you will see this:

AMPLIBRARYAGENT(8)        BSD System Manager's Manual       AMPLIBRARYAGENT(8)

NAME

     AMPLibraryAgent -- The media library agent for Music.app and TV.app.

SYNOPSIS

     AMPLibraryAgent

DESCRIPTION

     AMPLibraryAgent is a per-user daemon which manages the user's media.

     There are no configuration options to AMPLibraryAgent.  Users should not

     run AMPLibraryAgent it manually.

Mac OS X                          Dec 6, 2018                         Mac OS X

(END)

While not super-detailed in its description it does verify that this is OK to run on your system as it is a built-in part of macOS. This is not some virus stealing all of your CPU...it is one of Apple's processes stealing all of your CPU. So feel better about it.

try turning off Media Sharing in the Sharing system preference pane and restarting.

when I did this I restarted TV.app and it had the same problem for a few minutes. Once it rebuilt whatever was slowing it down I re-enabled Media sharing and so far no more issue.

sorry this isn't a very technical answer, maybe someone else can figure out exactly what is going on behind the scenes.

hope this helps others, the heat and fan noise was super annoying!

Ive also had this same thing all thru the beta and now with the new public release.

Intel Power Gadget shows the CPU actually hitting 100% non stop.

Its an Apple Private Framework, so i assume it should just work. Might be an issue with some other software i have installed.

I believe this is used for iPhone in Finder... My iPhone doesnt show and details, just loads non stop.

Same here. The Catalina update slowed my Mac to a crawl. The AMPLibraryAgent is pulling a constatnt 1.5GB of memory and running Facebook on Safari pulls over 2GB where it's never even shown up before.

Catalina.... so far Im part impressed, and part really annoyed. Mostly annoyed. My iMac is slower than it has ever been. Typically, my restart would take no more than 2 minutes (Fusion drive). Now, I need to restart and walk away. NOT ideal. In looking into the Activity Monitor, Im seeing the AMPLibraryAgent and the photoanalysisd running way too much.

MAC/APPLE PLEASE HELP THIS ISSUE.

i have exactly same issue after installing Catalina (since yesterday). CPU running at 160% for any kind of app, like onedrive, calendaragent, finder, photoanalysisd etc. My fan is working all the time. Very annoying!!

Same here on a Macbook Pro 2019. After I updated to Catalina, the fan came on very often and AMPLibraryAgent is using a lot of CPU.

One more observation after the update, I notice yesterday morning my TimeMachine backup 100s of GB of data. This morning it tried to backup 100s of GB of data again. I don't think I made that much changes in one day. Is it possible AMPLibraryAgent is converting some library to a new format?

I have a similar issue, though it's not taking up CPU. I have my Music library on an external drive and it prevents ejecting the drive until I quit AMPLibraryAgent in Activity Monitor. It's pretty irritating.

About to install new OS update 10.15.2 Fingers crossed:

"...This update adds the following features:

[ blah blah blah...]

[and]

This update also includes the following bug fixes and improvements:

iTunes Remote

• Adds support for using an iPhone or iPad to remotely control the Music and TV apps on a Mac

This is empirical, but in my case, it appears to be rebuilding an index of photo file names. I have a fairly large number of photos (>10000) that I share to apple TV. Any time I change anything in a photo folder (add, remove, move), I have to then go into the sharing section of system properties, unchoose the affected folder(s), apply, then rechoose the same folders and apply. This is necessary to get the changes to show up on the Apple TV. As soon as I go through this routine, the AMPLibraryAgent starts up and monopolizes the CPU for at least an hour. During this time, I cannot access any photos on the Apple TV. As soon as the library agent finishes, I can see my changes.

I believe this is necessary so that the apple tv can randomize the viewing order of photos. Apple doesn't send the library to the TV unit, just the index file, which the TV box then uses to point back to the library in whatever order you choose.

It shouldn't take this long to rebuild a database index, so maybe it's something else. Like I said, this is empirical. But it consistently behaves this way. The same thing used to happen when the photo sharing was managed from within iTunes.

Somehow the problem I was having with my MacBook Pro was linked to my iPhone 11. I was charging my phone unto my laptop via USB. If you have your Personal Hotspot on, turn it off and the problem will go away.

Apple isn't here. This is a user forum.

If you have suggestions or feedback: https://www.apple.com/feedback

Have a nice day.

Update…..The AMPLibraryAgent is drawing over 2GB, and every website I visit pulls another 650-750MB. I stared and quit Facebook website because it drew another 2.2GB.

I think the activity is related to Apple Music (perhaps AMP is Apple Music Player). My Apple Music is processing album artwork.

I did a clean install and its not happening anymore.