com.apple.mediaanalysisd files filling drive in macOS 15.1

mediaanalysisd and photoslibraryd are background processes which go through and analyze a new or updated Photos library when the Mac is otherwise idling. With large 500 GB libraries with 50 000 images and thousands of movies that might take a week or more. Set the Mac to never sleep (allow the screen to turn off, setting the library as system library might also help) and let the Mac be on day and night until those processes are done. Or move the library to an external APFS or MacOS extended disk.

I doubt it is supposed to be that huge.

Have you run Disk Utility's Disk First Aid on all connected drives?

In Disk Utility>View, select Show all Devices, highlight the top left entry.

Run Disk First Aid on all items in the left panel, from top down.

Are you running any VPN, Anti-Virus, or Cleaning apps?

We need to see what all is running, a report from this will not display any personal info...

Using EtreCheck - Apple Community

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info. Give it Full Disk Access.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Give etrecheck Full Disk Access before running.

Of note 15.3 fixed some 15.2 problems.

looks to have been tidied up in 15.2, my 18GB is now 344MB

and the total System Data has reduced from 130GB to 27GB so other things must have been done

however still got an issue with the size of utmapp as 28GB

Does mediaanalysisd cause that issue if you create a dummy new user and login to that account? If, that helps, you might try if moving the following preference file to the Desktop, and then rebooting helps (backup first, just in case):

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mediaanalysisd.plist

...there is another preference but handling it is more involved and I would not lightly fiddle that:

/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.mediaanalysisd.plist

This is an update since my radical move on 8 Jan 2025 of com.apple.mediaanalysisd to an external drive, replacing it with an alias:

• com.apple.mediaanalysisd has not grown much, from 74 GB to 74.6 GB.
• The usual quirks and curious behaviors of my system software seem to be continuing apace. Some things don't work, but then some things have not worked from time to time all along. I have noticed nothing startling.
• The Photos app, in contrast, has hung up several times, taking 'way too long to perform a simple task (e.g., rotate an HEIC), requiring a Force Quit followed by a Relaunch. In each case, however, after the Relaunch, the Photos app performed the same previously requested task, or another sufficiently similar, in a reasonable amount of time.

That is all.

--Gil

P.S.: I am running Sequoia 15.3.

Another 15.2 user(2021 iMac) with the experience of diminished hard drive space. For months, I have been diligently trying to manage larger files, even moving the Photos database to an external drive. When the recovered space was filled up in a matter of days, I knew something was wrong. GrandPerspective showed where the culprits were, all mediaanalysisd files, to the tune of ~70 GB, leaving less than 10 GB free.

There has been mention of a resolution by upgrading to 15.3. The upgrade just finished and, lo and behold, I'm up to over 80 GB of free disk space. YMMV

I never use the Photos Library feature, but this folder still randomly generates new files. So, my solution is as follows:

```bash

rm -rf /Users/zen/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd/Data/Library/Caches

ln -s /dev/null /Users/zen/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd/Data/Library/Caches

```

So far, I haven't noticed any side effects.

I've upgraded to macOS Sequoia 15.3.2 and it does NOT fix the issue. The `~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd/Data/Library/Caches` folder is just gobbling space.

This dirty workaround:

sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd/Data/Library/Caches
sudo ln -s /dev/null ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd/Data/Library/Caches

seems to work so far, but Apple really need to sort this out. What a disaster.

2024 nov post, finally this is addressed in 15.3

This problem is, at least for me, bigger than it appears. mediaanalysisd kept trying to analyze thousands of images in iCloud, rather than on my device. The problem is, these analysis attempts produce over 300GB of disk writes each day, often more. This bricked my M1 MacBook Pro as it killed the SSD, and it's happening again to my new M4 MBP. I have now turned off Spotlight and the new "Apple Intelligence" features, hopefully it saves my computer.

(My understanding is that mds_stores, logd, etc, are all part of the process, e.g. logs produced by mediaanalysisd will be written to disk by logd. According to `log stats`, mediaanalysisd is responsible for 61% of the recorded logs)

Here's what I did in early January.

I connected a 1TB external SSD and copied com.apple.mediaanalysisd to my external, replaced it with an alias, and emptied the Trash.

It seems to be working. com.apple.mediaanalysisd is now 75GB, but it's on an external drive so it isn't hurting anything.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/u17hsa/please_help_me_stop_mediaanalysisd_process/?rdt=46647

Upgrade to 15.3 & after a few days the problem should get better (see my previous post)

Had the same problem on my Mini with 256GB storage. i cleaned up several times deleting things that took 3GB or more and the drive kept filling up. Got on with Apple Tech Support and they had me delete the file, com.apple.mediaanalysisd file but that didn't work and after rebooting, i still didn't have any free space. I downloaded and used CleanMyMac from MacPaw and if found the file at 56GB. I used it to clean up the storage and that worked without seeming to cause any other problems. I too am unhappy with Apple for allowing a cache file to fill up my local hard drive!!!

Curious that your aliased folder is not updating. Perhaps it's not being used at all when it's not at the "correct" location.

I did something similar and symlinked the com.mediaanalysisd/Data dir to /dev/null. I thought the link would just get replaced with a proper directory, but now, nine hours later, it's still there and none of my disk space is wasted! :D

I do also wonder about the side effects. My Photos.app at least appears to be working. Previously Photos and a couple of other apps have actually been randomly quitting during the night. I've theorized that it might have been due to disk space getting low, so let's see if this behaviour stops now.