com.apple.MediaLibraryService

Hey, I found a crude workaround.

First of all, I had the same issue with com.apple.MediaLibraryService clogging my ram and accumulating cpu time whenever Pages 5.1 was on (or Numbers for that matter).

Some level of desperation led me to try to find ways to prevent the process from starting altogether ... but it didn't work. However, preventing com.apple.MediaLibraryService from calling some of the files it calls apparently solved the issue (those files can be seen in the Activity Monitor).

Disclaimer: The following works for me and caused so far no problem with any other app I routinely use. However, I believe it is bound to make some software wobble, so make sure you save the files somewhere before deleting them.

Method:

1. Make sure Pages/Numbers is closed and com.apple.MediaLibraryService isn't running

2. Go to Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/iLifeMediaBrowser/Plug-Ins

3. Safely archive all the files in the folder for when you need them

4. Delete all the files in the folder

5. Launch Pages... and voila.

I hope that can help some of you.

Results: this frees up some 3.6 GB ⚠ of memory. With Pages and Numbers running, 2.7 GB are freed up by not having 2 instances of com.apple.MediaLibraryService running, at 1.35 GB apiece. Pages RAM drops from 507.7 MB to 81.2 MB, Numbers usage drops from 568.8 MB to 108.8 MB.

I archived the Plug-Ins folder, and will restore it before applying any subsequent iWork or OS X updates, just to make sure any fixes are applied.

Now, I'd like to know what com.apple.IconServicesAgent does, and why it's the #2 memory hog on my system (at 301.7 MB right now). Looking forward to these bugs being squashed; should be a priority.

the problem is that once you upgrade to pages 5.1, you can't open the documents in pages '09. If you try it says to upgrade to the new version of pages.

You can if you don't save them in Pages 5 first! If they are saved in Pages 5 you can File > Export > Pages 09 and you cnaopen the document in Pages 09

I will try that!

Kahss, Thank you worked well for me. As you said it may impact something sooner or later, then again may not, but working well so far.

George in NY

Thanks for that tip Fruhulda,

Once I exported my document to Pages '09, I was able to work in it without the com.apple.MediaLibraryService taking up all the memory. I will stick to using pages '09 until there's a fix.

Nice workaround Kahss, thanks!

Adapting it slightly and using the trial and error approach I found the two culprits on my machine to be the two plugins related to the biggest libraries, namely:

iLMBiPhotoPlugin2012

iLMBiTunesPlugin

This has taken care of the problem (for now at least) on all iWork apps.

In conjunction with this I have also previosuly made sure that photographs are not shared over 'Home Sharing' in iTunes as that was suggested on a different thread.

Downgrading can be an issue due to compatability, so I hope that people can adapt the workaround to ensure they can use the current productivity apps and don't risk losing or corrupting files. 🙂

Anyway, just wanted to try and narrow it down in case people are worried about losing the benefits of some of the plugins that are not necessarily affected.

Any people know whether this has been addressed in the current Mavericks Beta?

P.S. upon launch there is a momentary spike of the 'com.apple.MediaLibraryService' but it goes away after like 5 seconds, so perhaps that is unavoidable for now.

I guess the people that experience this problem has huge music and pictures libraries on their machine? I have for sure. And you?

I have a very very large pictures library; It's upwards of 31,000 images but i keep it in an external harddrive with some home videos and some music. SOME music because I have iTunes Match so all my music now resides in the cloud. I only download what I need when I know I'm going to be in an area with ****** service. My music library is a little under 10,000 songs.

Walther Schoonenberg wrote:

I guess the people that experience this problem has huge music and pictures libraries on their machine? I have for sure. And you?

I read this thread with interest, as I just purchased a new MBA. Installed virgin Mavericks, ran it for a bit flawlessly, then did a backup and started loading the updates one by one. Restarted between each of the different application updates for Numbers, Keynote, etc., to make sure they would each run without problems. When I got to Pages (the only app of this group that I use a lot) it gave me that persistent "MediaLibraryService quit unexpectedly" error message when I opened any document. My documents were stored on iCloud, since they were all created with iPad. I could still edit, but the darned error message wouldn't quit. When I set up a dummy user account, and connected to iCloud, there was no problem. Initially, I reverted to the prior version, 5.0. No error with that, however, any recent docs (created after the version update date, I presume) would not open with this prior Pages version. Meanwhile, App Store still thought I was running updated version, so I couldn't update any longer directly from 5.0. Had to delete Pages app altogether, and re-download...this time of course it's 5.1. So, the error returned.

(By the way, a slick way to delete an app is via Launchpad. Hold alt/option key while in Launchpad and you'll see an "x" on any app that can be deleted (similar to Apple's mobile devices.)

Went to Genius Bar, and they were initially baffled. They wanted to migrate my entire User account piece by piece, to find the offending file. Crazy! Finally, we realized we could drill down to locate the MediaLibraryService file that was causing the problem, delete just that, and re-populate that file by freshly opening the application. We took the precaution, since these were coming from iCloud, of signing out of iCloud first, then after deleting the file, going to the iCloud.com website, signing back in there (instead of thru the Mac), and opening a stored Pages document. When we did this, the error was eliminated. Here were my steps. Thanks again to all here, and hope this helps someone further:

When opening iCloud document in Pages, had very persistent error message: “MediaLibraryService quit unexpectedly.”

Resolved with this:

1. Find this file:

Macintosh HD/Users/<User xyz>/Library/Containers/com.apple.MediaLibraryService

2. Copy this file to desktop (to archive).

3. Then, delete the file in root location.

4. Sign out of iCloud (System Preferences>iCloud) if that is the location of your documents.

5. Go to iCloud.com website, (sign in if needed), find a Pages document, and open it from there (not through Pages application on MacBook). (This was precautionary. It may have worked to do this through the Pages app on the Mac, too.)

6. This should re-populate the deleted file. This FIXED the persistent error.

A stripped down version of this has worked for me. I'll recap the issue I was having:

• Recieving the 'com.apple.mediaservicelibrary has quit unexpectedly' whilst using pretty much any iLife/iWork app (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Pages etc.)
• This seemed to stop any cross-app integration eg. importing media into pages docs, using iphoto pictures as contact information etc.

So, here's what did it for me:

1. Located the file :'Macintosh HD/Users/<User xyz>/Library/Containers/com.apple.MediaLibraryService' as suggested by Mark. I found it easiest to spotlight search 'Users'. If you don't see the Library folder in that location, you wil have to control-click the finder window, select 'get info' and check the 'Show library folder' check box.

2. Move the folder to the desktop.

3. Re-open pages/whichever app. This should repopulate the folder in that location. Interestingly, I noticed that whereas before there was just a log file, now there was a data folder as well. I'm by no means a techie but i'm assuming this was the root of the problem.

4. Now everything seems to be working harmoniously together.

Hopefully a combination of the advice on here can help you, many thanks to Mark for putting in the genius bar time to find this solution!

I originally noticed the com.apple.MediaLibraryService process taking up massive amounts of memory when I was taking notes in Pages while simulatenously watching lecture recordings with VLC... I just (incorrectly) assumed it was some side effect of playing a large video off an external drive in VLC.

Anyway... only one of my two Macs has a problem with the process. I have a mid-2010 MBP that shows massive CPU and RAM usage when I'm using Pages and a Haswell MBA that doesn't seem to have any problem. Since the disk space on my MBA is pretty limited, I stream my whole iTunes library through iTunes Match and don't have my iPhoto or Aperture libraries on it. My MBP has around 60 gigs of music and 50 gigs of photos, in addition to around 400 movies in my iTunes library that are stored on an external.

I guess I'm trying to figure out if it has something to do with the hardware differences between the two computers or if the cause is just the overall media libraries... Either way, this is pretty irritating.

(Just wanted to add that I haven't noticed the problem when using iTunes on its own...)

Today Apple gives us an iLife upgrade 9.0.4 for iPhoto, Aperture etc.: "This update improves the general stability of the media player and iPhoto". I've not yet installed this update. Has it something to do with our problem?