photoanalysisd taking large amounts of cpu

Happened with me. Stopped after several hours. I assume it was reorganising/analysing the library somehow.

I've had the same issue. I tried force quitting and it came right back. It's a new process for organizing photos via Sierra. Because it's taking so long I think it's a bug. Just my humble opinion.

The system is processing your photos - when completed you'll be able to query your library in clever ways.

You can force the photoanalysis daemon to pause by opening the Photos app - it suspends

activity while the app is open. (If you minimise the app photoanalysisd will spring back to life, however.)

If you click on "people" in the left hand sidebar of the Photos app, it tells you how many photos it has processed, and how many are remaining.

While I do appreciate this is what it's doing -- Why in the world is Apple processing photos in the background WHILE I'm using my machine?! This seems just absolutely insane to me, this going on while I'm TRYING to work with editing a 4k video... Sure, even if the process is set to a low priority, it's still using up cpu cycles that could be more helpful toward WHAT I'm doing. Why not do this when my computer is locked?!? Even then, it should tell me it's doing something like that, what if I've got a render going?! /sigh.

Exactly! This is ridiculous. Just updated to Sierra yesterday. My mac was perfectly silent on Yosemite... now my mac is almost burning flames out of it's CPU... It'd take too much to notify the user what's going to happen so that I don't have to spend my time googling this problem... Apple common you can do it better. I hope this process won't take forever. Apparently, it's not a coincidence that multiple people are trying to get an answer to this....

So when the Photos app is open, it hogs the CPU and now when it's closed...it hogs the CPU! I've got nearly 40,000 pix to scan and it's managed just over 1,000 in the 5 hours I've been using my Mac post-upgrade so I've got 8 more Mac-operating days to go.

I've been procrastinating on a switch to Adobe Lightroom for the past year and it looks like this will be the perfect motivation. Probably not intended but well done Apple OS Team :-)

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/import-iphoto.html

Curious -- Where do you guys see how far it's gone through its processing? Clicking people in the lefthand sidebar just shows me pictures, not sure what I'm missing, but it's probably something simple.

Dave

My experience is similar to that of ChristopherCurtis -- it took a few hours to complete the processing, meanwhile the CPU utilization was displayed at >100% on the activity monitor. Fan was running all-out during that time.

My informal testing suggest an estimate of approximately 1 hour per 1000 photographs, if you are not actively using the Mac during that time.

I've got an older (late 2009) iMac, and after 6 hours, only 1500 of 18,000 photos have been scanned. Apple ought to give the user an option (1) to reduce the priority of the photoanalysisd task, (2) forget People analysis (I don't use it -- perhaps this new analysis will improve its accuracy and recall, but Faces in iPhoto was laughable, making way too many errors of omission or commission) or at least allow the user to turn it off so a rational backup can be completed, (3) schedule it for off-hours, or all of the above.

After 10 hours...

Scanning all the photos might make sense for relatively small collections or entirely unorganized collections. I've got photos going back to 2007 that are well organized (previously into iPhoto "events"). Most of these are now archival "albums" but used only for reference or to find a particular photo if needed. I don't need "people" or "faces" for that. They are already labeled, grouped, and classified. In all there are 233 of these archival albums. There are only 53 albums that I actively share or view, including 28 albums from this year that we are actively using and organizing.

Perhaps Apple could allow us to flag albums or collections of photos as archival, then give the option to scan or not. Or as in iTunes, where we get to choose events and albums to sync with our other devices, provide a list of albums with checkboxes for different levels of automated photo analysis. At least for those of us who need them.

I don't recall seeing anything in the Settings or Photos Preferences to disable this feature -- is there a way to turn it off?

None that I have found. None reported so far that I can find. I've sent Apple some feedback.

Hello i_cola ...

The link you gave for Lightroom import of pictures is only for iPhoto and Aperture, not the Photos app on the Mac. To import the Photos library on the Mac, you have to first use Finder to create an "alias" file for the actual Photos Library, then import that "alias" instead. It will then import both the original pics and videos, and the .jpg for any that you may have edited. Good luck!

26000 in 48 hours so far. So I'm in for a few more days of processing.