Photos keeps scanning library, heating up machine, causing network congestion

[organisum]

delete

 

[satcomer]

The problem it uploading those images up to iCloud! To fix it you most stop uploading your Photos to iCloud especially if you have many pictures on an networked drive system! So dig into iCloud System Preferences from uploading ALL you many pictures to far away System in shaky breaky California!

 

[organisum]

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[satcomer]

Photos is not using iCloud, never turned on, it's using facial recognition to scan every image for faces. Though it is pretty crappy of Apple to grab as much data as it does by default with iCloud in macOS.

Then it might be spotlight going nuts on the mounted external drive! Make sure Spotlight isn’t going nuts on the external drive!

 

[organisum]

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[Wando64]

Closing the Photos app should stop the scanning.

 

[organisum]

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[Wando64]

I does not, it's a background process. It starts up on its own at all hours of the day, like when the laptop is in a closed computer bag to get all super hot!
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It's not unique to my situation. Put a large Photos library (mine in this case is 115GB) on a network volume. Or just a slower external drive. Watch how long it takes the photoslibraryd process to finish running facial recognition scans on all of your photos.

I looked into it a bit more and, while there are ways to prevent photolibraryd from running via sudo commands, it should be noted that it doesn’t just scan for faces, but also for photo context and objects so that it can sort photos by categories such as museums, beach, animals, concerts,food, etc...

 

[Honza1]

Report to Apple as bug. It is a bug... It is clear, that someone did not realize that: a. Photos libraries get as large os 115Gb. and b. they can be on external (slow) systems. And they designed system, which fails under these conditions to behave reasonably. I am sure on their test system with 10Gb on internal SSD it works just fine...
One would think they should know, but there is no guarantee they actually do.

 

[HDFan]

I have a Photos library on a server share. Even though it is not the currently used Photos library, Photos insists on scanning it. It has been weeks and Photos hasn't finished scanning.

Did it ever work, or is this a newly setup photos album on the NAS?

 

[organisum]

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[macnicol]

I looked into it a bit more and, while there are ways to prevent photolibraryd from running via sudo commands, it should be noted that it doesn’t just scan for faces, but also for photo context and objects so that it can sort photos by categories such as museums, beach, animals, concerts,food, etc...

What sudo commands deactivate photolibraryd? This process is destroying my external drive that has the Photo Library by running 24/7 and the drive mechanism is grinding all day and night long. I have to force quit photolibraryd and then use Disk Utility to unmount my external Photos drive but it takes several attempts and timing to do it.

 

[organisum]

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[macnicol]

I created an empty new Photo lib on my internal boot drive and designated it as my primary photo library, and then dismounted my external drive that has my real photo library, but photolibraryd still finds that photo library and then proceeds to scan and analyze it until the external drive gets hot and the access noise drives us nuts. HELP! I may just disconnect that drive and only connect it when I need to access photos.

 

[thanar]

Did anyone find any solution to this issue? I opened a remote photos library a week ago, and it's been sucking the speed out of my LAN ever since, even when Photos is not running and share is unmounted.

 

[organisum]

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[thanar]

Sure, that's a way to do it, but it seems too brutal for my taste. Possible workaround in this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/need-help-photolibraryd-constantly-running-and-mds-indexing.2190507/

 

[organisum]

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[organisum]

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