Photoanalysisd has been running on my iMac for a combined total of over 140 hours. I set my Mac to not sleep at night hoping this process will finally complete.
It is consuming 98 to 99% of CPU time. It is raising my CPU temperatures to a range of 175 to 207°.
This thing should be classified as a virus.
Does anybody know how to stop it??
[Re-Titled By Moderator]
iMac 27″, macOS 14.6
launchctl disable gui/$UID/com.apple.photoanalysisd
launchctl kill -TERM gui/$UID/com.apple.photoanalysisd
I tried both commands, and I had to sudo su before the second one. However, photoanalysisd remained running.
Force quit it manually (within activity monitor), along with photolibraryd. Then I did some cleaning up in my login items, retstarted my iMac, but photoanalysisd restarted, at the same 100% CPU usage as before.
Any other suggestions ? I am getting dangerously close to ditching Photos.app in favor of something else (I miss Aperture so much!). Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer perhaps.
Amongst the other steps I tried to solve my issue (some with Apple Support, some on my down) :
My library had close to 85K pictures up to two weeks ago. I cleaned it up by removing duplicates, screen captures and insignificant photos. It's down to 56K.
UID is defined. If it didn't work you likely typed the command wrong.
Post the command you entered and the response from Terminal window.
BaubR300 wrote:
Photoanalysisd has been running on my iMac for a combined total of over 140 hours. I set my Mac to not sleep at night hoping this process will finally complete.
It is consuming 98 to 99% of CPU time. It is raising my CPU temperatures to a range of 175 to 207°.
This thing should be classified as a virus.
Does anybody know how to stop it??
ref post by léonie—
kill photoanalysisd - Apple Community
Thank you for the reply. I’ve been to that link already and rebuilt the photo database.
Have tried to run the launch command; however the $UID variable is not defined with no explanation of how to define it. That command does not run under Sonoma. I get a variable undefined error and it lists UID variable as the issue.
Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
Thank you for the response. I didn't type the command. It was a copy/paste from another chat in the Apple Community from years ago. It looks like the $UID is an undefined variable in the command string.
Here's the text copied from Terminal
-----------------
Last login: Thu Aug 29 20:36:02 on ttys000
[Bob-Roths-Computer:~] bobroth% launchctl disable gui/$UID/com.apple.photoanalysisd
UID: Undefined variable.
--------------------
BTW, once the above command executes, then the next command to actually kill photoanalysisd is:
-----------------
launchctl kill -TERM gui/$UID/com.apple.photoanalysisd
--------------
It has the same variable which results in the same error message as above.
Thanks for the help!!
Thank you for the response. I didn't type the command. It was a copy/paste from another chat in the Apple Community from years ago. It looks like the $UID is an undefined variable in the command string.
Here's the text copied from Terminal
-----------------
Last login: Thu Aug 29 20:36:02 on ttys000
[Bob-Roths-Computer:~] bobroth% launchctl disable gui/$UID/com.apple.photoanalysisd
UID: Undefined variable.
--------------------
BTW, once the above command executes, then the next command to actually kill photoanalysisd is:
-----------------
launchctl kill -TERM gui/$UID/com.apple.photoanalysisd
--------------
It has the same variable which results in the same error message as above.
Thanks for the help!!
UID should be defined. It is the user ID of the logged in user. If not defined for you, that could be a reason you have other issues. If you are the first user created on that Mac, you can substitute 501 for $UID.
id -u
will show your user id.
It could be a difference in bash vs zsh. That was written when bash was the default shell. Now, it is zsh. Variable handling may be different.
Thank you for the info. Yes, I was the first user created so, using the id-u command, I verified my UID is 501. That info is much appreciated. I no longer get the error message.
However, the commands still did not stop the photoanalysisd process. I suspect something else is set or implemented to it keep running. Any other suggestions are appreciated and I'll continue to search the web, too.
"photoanalysisd" consuming 99% CPU, How do I stop it on my iMac running macOS Sonoma.