Help › Photos, iCloud, Spotlight
Slow Mac after an update? Photos, iCloud or Spotlight is busy
After a macOS update, a new Mac, or a big photo import, your Mac does hours of work in the background. Photos analyzes your pictures, iCloud syncs your files, and Spotlight indexes your disk again. This is normal, and it stops by itself.
How to tell which one it is
Open Activity Monitor (press Command-Space and type “Activity Monitor”), click CPU, and look for these names near the top:
| Process | What it does |
|---|---|
photoanalysisd, mediaanalysisd | Photos looks for faces, objects and text in your pictures. |
bird, cloudd, fileproviderd | iCloud Drive uploads and downloads your files. |
mds_stores, mdworker_shared | Spotlight reads new and changed files so that you can search them. |
Why it happens
- After a macOS update, Spotlight often indexes the disk again, and Photos can analyze the library again.
- On a new Mac, iCloud downloads your files, and Photos downloads and analyzes your library.
- After you add a lot, such as a big photo import or many files in iCloud Drive.
How to help it finish
- Let it run. Leave the Mac on and plugged in when you do not use it, for example overnight. Most of this work takes a few hours to a day.
- Choose what iCloud syncs. Choose Apple menu › System Settings, click your name, then click iCloud. Turn off what you do not need on this Mac.
- Skip folders in Spotlight. If Spotlight indexes a large folder that you never search, add it to the privacy list in Spotlight settings.
- Do not force these processes to quit. macOS starts them again, and the work takes longer.
When to worry
If one of these processes is still busy after two or three days, restart your Mac. If it is still busy after that, contact Apple Support.
Sluggish tells you when it is normal
When Photos, iCloud or Spotlight is the cause, Sluggish says so in plain words and tells you that it stops by itself. You do not have to guess what mdworker_shared means.
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