What is mediaanalysisd on a Mac, and can you stop it?

mediaanalysisd is the part of macOS that looks at your photos and videos so the Mac can search them. It is what lets you type “dog” or “beach” into Photos and find the right pictures, copy text out of a picture (Live Text) and identify things in an image (Visual Look Up). It can use a lot of processor time after you import many photos, and that is normal. You can end it, but macOS starts it again, so it is better to let it finish.

The name decodes easily: media, analysis, daemon (the “d” at the end means a background program).

What mediaanalysisd does

When photos arrive on your Mac, by import, by iCloud Photos syncing them down or by a restore, nothing in them is searchable yet. They are just pixels. mediaanalysisd studies the images and videos and records what it finds: objects, scenes, text and similar details. Other parts of macOS then use that record.

That is how a few features work:

• Search in Photos for things you never labelled.
• Live Text, where text in a picture can be selected and copied.
• Visual Look Up, which can recognise things such as plants, landmarks and pets.

Foreman describes it as: analyses photos and videos for search, Live Text and Visual Look Up. That matches the above.

The work is done on your Mac, which is why it is visible as processor use. It is a close relative of photoanalysisd, which finds faces, scenes and memories; What is photoanalysisd on a Mac? explains that one.

Why it is busy

It is busy when there is a lot that is new to look at. The usual triggers are:

• importing a card of photos or videos from a camera
• turning on iCloud Photos on a Mac, or signing in on a new Mac with a large library
• restoring a Mac from a backup or migrating from an old one
• a macOS update that adds or changes what Photos can recognise, so old photos are looked at again

A big library takes a long time on its first pass. Videos take more work than still pictures. While it works it competes with whatever else you are doing, so a laptop can get warm and its fans can start.

To confirm that mediaanalysisd is the cause rather than guess, you need a tool that lists processes by name. The Force Quit window (Option-Command-Escape) lists only apps, so it will not show it. In Terminal, top -o cpu lists processes with the busiest first (press q to leave). It counts each processor core as 100 percent, so a busy process can read above 100. Foreman, below, shows each process as a share of the whole Mac, in plain English.

Can you stop it

You can end it, and you probably should not. If you end it, macOS notices it is gone and starts it again later, and because the photos were not finished, the work starts back up. You gain a few quiet minutes at the price of the same work happening again.

What helps instead:

1. Let it finish. Leave the Mac on and, for a laptop, plugged in. Analysis is designed to run in the background, and it usually settles after the library has been worked through once.
2. Do the big imports at a convenient time. If you know you are importing a thousand photos, do it before a break, not before a video call.
3. Check it is not stuck. If it has been running hard for days with no new photos, restart the Mac. That clears most stalls.
4. Wait out the update. After a macOS update the first day or two can be heavy. Why is my Mac slow after a macOS update? covers that.

If you want to end a background process once, for example to get through a meeting, How to end a background process on a Mac shows the safe ways. Ending it is a pause, not a setting.

There is no switch in System Settings that turns the analysis off by itself. Be careful of any advice to disable system services in Terminal. It can break search and Live Text, it is easy to forget what you changed, and macOS updates may undo it anyway.

Keeping it out of your way

The practical approach is to leave the analysis alone and manage how it competes with your own work.

Foreman helps you see it. On the Processes page mediaanalysisd shows as “Media analysis” with the real name beside it in grey, and you can click CPU to sort so that it rises to the top while it is busy. That shows you the size of the problem, and whether it is falling over time. Above each column is the whole Mac’s total, so you can see how much of the processor it is taking.

Foreman can also slow it down. mediaanalysisd runs under your own account (the User column shows this), and Foreman offers Efficiency Mode for any process that does, including parts of macOS like this one. Select the Media analysis row and choose Efficiency Mode: it then runs at background priority, which on Apple silicon means the efficiency cores, with its disk use turned down. The analysis still gets done, more slowly, and how much difference you notice depends on how busy the Mac is. Turn Efficiency Mode off from the same place and it runs at full speed again at once, and it also goes back to full speed if Foreman quits. Efficiency Mode on a Mac: how to slow down a background app describes when that is worth doing.

When to worry

Usually you should not. Worry if:

• it never seems to finish, even after a restart and several days
• the Mac gets hot or loud with nothing else running, for days

Then check how much free space the disk has in System Settings, General, Storage, because a nearly full disk makes every background job slower. If it is still wrong, a restart and a macOS update are the next steps, and after that it is worth asking Apple Support.

Quick answers

• Is it spying on my photos? The analysis itself runs on the Mac, which is how search works without uploading your library. When you use Visual Look Up, the Mac does ask Apple’s servers for information about what it recognised.
• Why does it use so much processor time? Image and video analysis takes real work, and a first pass over a big library is the heaviest case.
• Will it stop? Yes, once the library has been analysed.
• Is it safe to end? Yes, but it is temporary.

If you want to look at it yourself, Foreman is $12 once and free for 24 hours.