Why mediaanalysisd Uses High CPU on Mac and Whether Its Cache Is Safe to Delete

If Activity Monitor shows mediaanalysisd near the top of the CPU list, or a folder named com.apple.mediaanalysisd keeps growing, macOS is analyzing images and video in the background. It is Apple's media analysis service, it runs on every recent Mac, and most of the time it settles on its own once the work it was given is done. The two common fixes passed around online, disabling the service and deleting its whole container, both throw away finished work and start the analysis again.

This guide covers what the service works on, how to tell a finishing job from a loop, which folder is safe to clear, and what the 2023 reports about its network connections actually found. For slowdowns that start in the Photos library itself, photoanalysisd high CPU covers the library side.

What mediaanalysisd Works On

The process does not belong to one app. Several parts of macOS hand it images, video or text to analyze:

The last row has no Apple statement behind it. 9to5Mac's own fix was to leave the Mac plugged in overnight and let it finish. The Spotlight row matters mostly to developers: on the forum thread above, an iOS app running in Simulator kept mediaanalysisd busy until the app's Core Spotlight indexing calls were skipped in the Simulator build.

Finishing or Looping

Open Activity Monitor, choose View › All Processes, and type mediaanalysisd in the search field. Note three things:

1. CPU now, and again an hour later.
2. Disk: whether Bytes Written keeps climbing.
3. What changed before it started: a macOS update, a photo import, iCloud Photos turned on, or a new app that indexes content.

A job that is finishing comes in bursts that grow further apart. Leave the Mac on power and awake overnight, as 9to5Mac did, and compare the next morning. A loop looks different: the same high CPU returns every day with no new photos, no update and no new app, and the cache folder below grows without stopping. On a developer Mac, quit Simulator once; if the process goes idle, the cause is the app under test rather than macOS.

Force quitting mediaanalysisd only buys a few minutes. macOS starts it again and it picks up the same queue.

The Cache Folder That Can Grow

The service keeps its working files in its own container:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd/Data/Library/Caches

Check how large it is in Terminal:

du -sh ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd/Data/Library/Caches

The Mac Observer describes bugs on macOS Sequoia that let this folder grow without limit. If it is many gigabytes and still growing:

1. Restart the Mac, so the service lets go of the files it had open.
2. In Finder, choose Go › Go to Folder, paste the path above, and move the items inside Caches to the Trash. Leave the Caches folder itself in place.
3. Check the size again a day later. Some regrowth is normal while analysis runs again; steady growth with no new media is worth reporting to Apple with your macOS version.

Two other places look similar and are not caches. ~/Library/MediaAnalysis holds finished analysis results for people and scenes; removing it starts that analysis from the beginning. The rest of the com.apple.mediaanalysisd container is the service's own state.

What Not to Do

• Do not disable the service. Guides suggest launchctl disable or unloading its launch agent. That turns off face and object recognition and Photos search, and the change stays until you reverse it, long after you have forgotten why search stopped finding things.
• Do not delete the whole container. rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd resets everything the service has already processed, so the full analysis, and the CPU use you wanted to stop, starts again.
• Do not delete anything inside the Photos library package to quiet the process. The photoanalysisd guide explains Apple's repair path for a library that really is damaged.

About Its Network Connections

In January 2023 a developer saw mediaanalysisd connect to Apple while browsing images in Finder on macOS Ventura 13.1 and called it image scanning. Others tested it, as Michael Tsai's roundup collects: Mysk decrypted the traffic and found an empty request with no image data or identifiers, later saying it was a bug fixed in 13.2. Howard Oakley traced the connection to Live Text checking for language assets before analysis, found no image identifiers sent, and saw no change in 13.2.

Neither finding showed images being uploaded. Visual Look Up is the feature that does send something: when you use it to identify an object, Oakley found the service computes a hash from the image and sends it to Apple's servers for the lookup. That happens when you ask for a lookup, not while the process sits busy in the background.

Where Mole Fits

Mole's Clean lists the items inside that Caches folder as Media Analysis Cache in App Caches & Logs. When the service has a file there open, Mole leaves the row out of that scan instead of offering something it would refuse to delete; run the scan again after a restart. The rest of the container and ~/Library/MediaAnalysis are never Clean rows. In Analyze, ~/Library/MediaAnalysis carries a note saying what it holds, so a large figure there reads as photo and video analysis rather than a mystery. Mole does not stop, disable or restart mediaanalysisd.

FAQ

Is mediaanalysisd a virus?

No. It is part of macOS and runs on every recent Mac. Its executable lives in the system volume, which apps cannot modify.

Why does it run when Photos is closed?

Apple designed Photos analysis to run while you aren't using the app, and Live Text and Spotlight hand it work too. Closing Photos does not end the queue.

Does clearing its cache delete my photos?

No. The Caches folder holds working files, not photos or the library. Expect the service to do some analysis again afterward.

How long should it take after an update?

Apple gives no fixed time; for People & Pets it says up to a few days. Keep the Mac on power and awake overnight, then compare. Daily spikes weeks later with nothing new added are the case to report.