Sonoma Photos.app 14.0 and 14.1 very slow, photolibraryd using 40 GB of memory

I have quite large Photos library, ca 15k photos and 870 videos, mostly iPhone photos, some RAWs form a DSLR. Whilst everything is in the iCloud, I keep originals on my Mac, and the library is ca 100 GB.

Recently, with the Sonoma installation, Photos started to misbehave. When I delete a photo, or sometimes just zoom onto one, the app hangs for ca 2 to 5 minutes. The app itself isn't using too much memory or CPU, but the problem is with photolibraryd. I saw it using 45 GB, with a 15 GB swap used. It could also use up to 250% CPU. I tried to rebuild with cmd-opt-click of the app, and it seemed to go through. The interface now says "Restoring from iCloud..." in the bottom of the photo list, but the progress bar is full with no indication of progress. I don't really see a high network activity to confirm the photos are getting re-downloaded.

Anyone has a similar experience? Yeah, I was about to clean up my library, but now it needs to wait...

Mac mini

Posted on Oct 26, 2023 8:18 AM

Top-ranking reply

zpjet Author

Level 1

22 points

Posted on Oct 27, 2023 1:46 AM

OK too early to jump to a conclusion, but maybe it was ~/Library/Photos/Libraries/Syndication.photoslibrary which was botched.

Earlier, I deleted my main library and created a new one, but it was the same - memory use creeping up to 45 GB.
Then I noticed, when inspecting the photolibraryd process and checking its Open Files and Ports, that there's one more library being worked on - and from a quick web search, I learned there's one maintained by the system for shared photos. So I deleted it as well - I pressed cmd-backspace on it, but then I had to force quit the photolibraryd in Activity Monitor so it would move it to bin.
Then I gave my Mac one more restart, and when I opened Photos, everything stayed calm for the first time.
I then went to Photos > Settings > iCloud to re-enable iCloud Photos, and it calmly synced my almost 15k photos in ca five minutes. I tried to delete a few and it worked well, syncing the changes to my iPhone in about two seconds.
Now I have the last step left - to re-enable Download Originals to this Mac, which I had before, in order to run local Time Machine backup. I'll turn it on Saturday morning as there will be some bandwidth needed to download those 100 GB.

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Sonoma Photos.app 14.0 and 14.1 very slow, photolibraryd using 40 GB of memory

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