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photoanalysisd running for over a week now on Network Attached Storage photo library

Despite constantly disabling and killing the photoanalysisd daemon, it keeps starting up every 2 hours. I have several Photos libraries on USB and NAS disks. But only 1 is the default library. However, I am finding that photoanalysisd keeps running and analysing my external disks. Some of the disks are still being analysed over a week after the latest reboot of my iMac.


I've read articles about booting in recovery mode, unsetting the Big Sur security on the root disk and removing the photoanalysisd plist file. Is there anything less drastic, and more permanent, available? I'm assuming that with each Mac OS update that the photoanalysisd plist file will be restored and the reboot into recovery mode would need to be done again.


I'm just wondering if there is some file or db entry that photoanalysisd keeps updated that lists where the photo libraries are and if I can remove the external libraries from the list to be analysed?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 5, 2021 1:15 AM

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Posted on Jun 5, 2021 1:24 AM

You will always have issues with a library on an unsupported device. A NAS is not a suitable location. The Library needs to be on a disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or afps and not in a networked location.


You risk significant dataloss.

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7 replies

Jun 10, 2021 4:03 AM in response to ksaro1

FWIW - if anyone else has a similar issue, I've fixed this. Apple Photos seems to assume any directory named Photos Library.photoslibrary is a Photos Library and is automatically scanned by photoanalysed. By simply renaming this library photoanalysed ignores this directory.


In the future if I'm needing to access the photos I'll just rename this library back to the original name Photos Library.photoslibrary.

Jun 8, 2021 11:35 PM in response to Yer_Man

@yer_man - thanks for your reply. However, I wasn't asking what are supported storage locations for a Photos library. I have some old Photos libraries stored on NAS devices as an archive of these libraries that have come from old iPhones and Macs and iPads. My main Photos library on my Mac is on a supported filesystem. However, I am finding photoanalysisd constantly running and creating all kinds of sqlite files on these archived libraries, which I certainly didn't ask for. Why is Photos analysing libraries other than the main one? Is there any method to tell Photos that these are archived libraries and I don't want them analysed?

Jun 8, 2021 11:54 PM in response to ksaro1

However, I am finding photoanalysisd constantly running and creating all kinds of sqlite files on these archived libraries,


Which is exactly the kind of thing that happens when the library is on an unsupported device. The solution is simple: move the libraries to a supported location, and hope they haven't been damaged already.

Jun 10, 2021 10:56 AM in response to ksaro1

ksaro1 wrote:

FWIW - if anyone else has a similar issue, I've fixed this. Apple Photos seems to assume any directory named Photos Library.photoslibrary is a Photos Library and is automatically scanned by photoanalysed. By simply renaming this library photoanalysed ignores this directory.

In the future if I'm needing to access the photos I'll just rename this library back to the original name Photos Library.photoslibrary.

I believe that this would be a temporary band-aid because once you start using the renamed library, it is recognized again and photoanalysed will start working on it again. I noticed this because I have multiple such Photos Libraries with various file names. I found that that background process eventually finishes with Photos Libraries on a directly connected drive. However as Yer Man already pointed out, on a NAS device it will be much slower (instead of taking hours or a day or two it could take weeks or even months) and that is not a safe location because it is unsupported by such libraries and with some future MacOS update or upgrade it could result in data loss. Not sure why photoanalysed is a concern for you since it runs in the background and uses few resources (which is one reason it may take a long time on a large library).

Jun 10, 2021 11:31 AM in response to steve626

and that is not a safe location because it is unsupported by such libraries and with some future MacOS update or upgrade it could result in data loss.


As Leonie points out, the risk is not an update but rather that libraries on unsupported locations silently degrade over time. The nature and extent of the degradation is not visible unless you happen to click on an image that's already affected. But in a situation where a library is not often used then the first sign you get is when it won't open. At heart, a NAS is a headless computer usually running a stripped down version of Linux. So, you're hosting a Mac database on a Linux computer, and for some reason folks expect that to work when they wouldn't expect one hosted on a Windows computer to work, for some reason. Apple say it's not wise and risks dataloss, but hey ho. Folks do what they want to do.

photoanalysisd running for over a week now on Network Attached Storage photo library

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