Q: com.apple.MediaLibraryService

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?

I don't see any update... and if I'm not mistaken, iLife Support 9.0.4 was released in February of 2010...

You get that  update from 2010 when you remove the plugins as per above. Going through with it essentially reinstalls the plug-ins (as far as I could tell).

Yes, I see that now too. I guess this update is offered to me because I removed the plugins in Library/Application support/iLifeMediaBrowser (see your tip above). This helped me, the problems are vanished after removing these plugins. So I guess, I have them back when I update this 2010 update.

Ah, that makes sense... I never removed them, so that's likely why I don't see the update

For reasons of curiosity I installed the update but nothing seems to have changed. The removed plugins are not reinstalled. Strange. Nothing is changed in the behavior. My fixes are not affected. After doing these two fixes my Mavericks installation that made my computer unworkable slow is fast and without problems:

- removed the plugins in Library/Application support/iLifeMediaBrowser. This stops the overexcessive use of internal memory by some apps like Pages and Aperture.

- used the fix to remove the bug that made Finder terribly slow and as a result several apps too: changing the hosts file that prevents Finder to search to network folders. See: http://osxdaily.com/2013/11/24/slow-open-save-dialog-problem-mac-os-x/

The update has no impact on this.

I have seen no problems with these changes. In fact, Mavericks works now as was promised. In fact, I need no update anymore, although I probably will roll back these changes before updating to 10.9.2 that will be here soon.

Walther Schoonenberg wrote:

 

After doing these two fixes my Mavericks installation that made my computer unworkable slow is fast and without problems:

- removed the plugins in Library/Application support/iLifeMediaBrowser. This stops the overexcessive use of internal memory by some apps like Pages and Aperture.

 

I have seen no problems with these changes. In fact, Mavericks works now as was promised. In fact, I need no update anymore, although I probably will roll back these changes before updating to 10.9.2 that will be here soon.

 

Same experience as far as removing the plugins. Returned my machine to normal speed etc. Haven't noticed any problem with anything so far caused by their removal.

George in NY

You sir, saved my ***. But besides that I'm really disappointed in Apple. A real solution is still lacking, while these com.apple.medialibraryservice thread are already bubbling up for weeks.

Edit: lol @ automatic censorship

@Walther, all:

It seems the service is behaving now with 10.9.2 update (I did not use the tip to remove any of the plug-ins). Here's what I see now:

Pages:     service is consistently at 460.5MB RAM usage

Numbers:service is consistently at 468.0MB RAM usage (after maxing out at 589.4MB)

Keynote:  service is consistently at 468.1MB RAM usage (after maxing out at 610.0MB)

iTunes:*    service is consistently at 300.1MB RAM usage

*iTunes Photo Sharing w/ATV turned on and sharing photos from iPhoto.

Hopefully, 10.9.2 helps you all out.

@edzHelp

For me it's also fixed. Instead of 1,3 GB for every medialibraryservice it's now only 300mb. CPU is 0% after one minute. The 300mb of medialibraryservice and de 130mb of iconservicesagent are still quite a lot compared to other processes but I think Apple did design it that way. They're both related to lots of images so that makes sense.

Memory pressure is also very low, so that's a good sign.

After 10.9.2, com.apple.MediaLibraryService: memory usage is down, but still a massive amount of memory used ... for what? Also, Pages and Numbers both continue to command a huge amount of memory (5.3x and 11.4x that of Word and Excel, respectively).

Current stats:

com.apple.MediaLibraryService, 355.4 MB (1st instance for Pages); was 1.35 GB

com.apple.MediaLibraryService, 323.7 MB (2nd instance for Numbers); was 1.35 GB

Pages, 501.4.MB with a simple plain page with 3 lines of text; was 507.7 MB

Numbers, 530.0 MB with 3 small spreadsheets; was 568.8 MB

Compare, MS Word 14.3.8 launches and holds at 95.0 MB, MS Excel 14.3.8, holds at 49.8 MB.

And, something new: now there's a second instance of com.apple.IconServicesAgent, doing ... what of value?

com.apple.IconServicesAgent, 273.9 MB (first instance)

com.apple.IconServicesAgent, 159.8 MB (second instance)

Yes, after installing the update 10.9.2 memory usage is more optimal. It seems that this problem is solved. I lost a lot of productivity, so I'm glad that this upgrade was faster available than expected. Thanks, Apple.

Sorry to be the party pooper but just installed 10.9.2 on my 2013 MBP which had been slowish but otherwise worked fine. After update problems as outlined by OP started. Workaround (dumping files from Plug-Ins folder in iLifeMediaBrowser folder ... after archiving of course) has restored function (and iLife Apps seem to open a little faster). Interestingly iLifeMediaBrowser/Plug-Ins folder hasn't repoplulated with any plug-ins even after all iLife Apps have been opened. Looks to me that 10.9.2 has only sorted the problem for some users.

Continued from above

6 yr old iMac and similar aged MBP both running 10.9.2 from update without triggering 'com.apple.MediaLibraryService problem'(all running identical versions of iLife Apps). Compaired contents of MacintoshHD/Library/Application Support/iLifeMediaBrowser/Plug-ins folder and affected and unaffected Macs both have same content. Thought of messing with MacintoshHD/Users/<User xyz>/Library/Containers/com.apple.MediaLibraryService deletion as detailed above (mark from st. louis) but decided instead to repopulate MacintoshHD/Library/Application Support/iLifeMediaBrowser/Plug-ins folder from archive folder. Restarted Mac and problem has disappeared. Not a clue why this has happened (but then not a clue how support files/plug-ins work!).

Workaround seems to be:

Archive (to desktop) then delete contents of MacintoshHD/Library/Application Support/iLifeMediaBrowser/Plug-ins folder

Restart Mac

Open a few iLife documents

Repopulate MacintoshHD/Library/Application Support/iLifeMediaBrowser/Plug-ins folder from Archive on desktop and 'com.apple.MediaLibraryService problem' should be resolved.

Only other thing I did was sign out of iCloud web as one post suggested, but I can't see that this would have any effect.

Whatever fix was implemented with OS X 10.9.2, it's hardly optimal. There's still an issue with the contents of the <Macintosh HD>/Library/Application Support/iLifeMediaBrowser/Plug-Ins folder that causes greatly increased RAM usage by com.apple.MediaLibraryService and Pages.app and Numbers.app. Delete contents of the iLifeMediaBrowser/Plug-Ins folder and RAM usage drops dramatically, and in limited testing I don't notice any usability issues with the plug-ins removed.

Results with current versions of Pages and Numbers running:

Pages, 501.4.MB with plug-ins, 73.7 MB without.

Numbers, 530.0 MB with plug-ins, 94.3 MB without.

com.apple.MediaLibraryService, 355.4 MB with plug-ins, 2.3 MB without (first instance).

com.apple.MediaLibraryService, 323.7 MB with plug-ins, 2.4 MB without (second instance).

With plug-ins: 1.71 GB

Without plug-ins: 172.7 MB

What functions should account for 1.54 GB of RAM? That's a lot of memory for many users, and with memory hogs such as Web browsers running, will cause their Macs to bog down for no good reason.