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Photos Agent is taking up all my CPU

A few days ago I noticed a process that is constantly running. It takes up a lot of my CPU and therefore my fan is running high after just opening Safari or doing some multitasking. My battery is at 60% after just an hour.

The Activitymonitor shows the Photos-Agent running all the time at around 90% CPU. At first I thought the photos app was just downloading a few photos and processing them. But this is going on for some days now and it's not getting better.

I attached screenshots from the Activitymonitor showing the process and its details.

It this a problem with the latest MacOS Update? I have around 5500 pictures in my photo library.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), macOS High Sierra (10.13.2)

Posted on Dec 12, 2017 1:26 AM

23 replies

léonie

Level 10

194,345 points

Jan 15, 2018 1:01 AM in response to Jack Haal

Jack, the only way to prevent this cache is to avoid videos in HEVC format and photos in HEIF/HEIC.

The drawback will be, that the photos and videos will need twice the amount of storage in iCloud and on your iOS devices, and the transmission time will also be longer. But you will not have the HEVC original plus the cached videos stored on the Mac.

Jan 15, 2018 8:16 PM in response to léonie

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I that wouldn't be an option for me, because I would like to keep the space used by the iCloud Photos to a minimum.

There is one other thing which I can think of, however. Would it be possible to move the folder to an external drive and then create a symbolic link on my internal drive pointing to the external drive? In that case it wouldn't eat up my (already limited) internal drive space.

Jan 20, 2018 7:17 AM in response to philipfromerlangen

Hi Philipfromerlangen,

thank you, after another 2 weeks, still no more pictures uploaded to iCloud. So I decided to follow your advice.

I deactivated iCloud for photos (and yes, there is scary confirmation to delete the low res version of 3000 pictures that have not been downloaded, but they remained in iCloud), rebooted the machine and activated iCloud for photos again. Apple required me to upgrade the iCloud storage because the accumulated volume of picture on the MacBook plus the stuff already on iCloud exceeded my quota. Then I connected the computer directly to LAN and - voilà- the next morning all 37000 pictures and 400+ videos were uploaded to iCloud!

Thank you for the hint!

Dec 17, 2017 7:41 AM in response to philipfromerlangen

I am not using iCloud for the storage of pictures. The transfer from my macbook air to the iPhone is by wire. Is there any Help?

Dec 18, 2017 9:21 AM in response to léonie

das klingt plausibel! Ich habe ca 280 Videos und unter den Fotos nochmal ca 200 clips.

Was muss ich tun um rauszukriegen bei welchen videos es möglicherweise klemmt?

léonie

Level 10

194,345 points

Dec 18, 2017 9:42 AM in response to vogelsgesang

Spiele die Videos der Reihe nach mal an, ob dort schon Gesichter markiert wurden.

Dann entferne alle Videos, auf denen noch keine Gesichter markiert wurden.

Jan 16, 2018 7:32 PM in response to léonie

Could you please reply? I'm currently waiting for an answer 🙂

Jan 17, 2018 12:08 AM in response to Jack Haal

after I have gone through all my pictures and naming almost all people the permanent tuning of photoanasysis has stopped. but I don't really know why.

Photos Agent is taking up all my CPU