com.apple.mediaanalysisd Cache on Mac Using Tons of Storage? Here’s the Fix

Some MacOS Sequoia users have discovered that the com.apple.mediaanalysisd directory in MacOS is taking up very large amounts of disk storage capacity with cache files.

If you have discovered your Mac disk space has reduced since installing or updating to MacOS Sequoia, the inordinately large com.apple.mediaanalysisd cache file issue could be to blame. A variety of Mac users have reported the directory being filled with 15GB+ of data, with some users noting 50 GB, 80 GB, even 140GB of cache files, filling users entire disk drives with the cache bundle files.

Let’s review what the directory is, and how to recover your disk storage space.

What is com.apple.mediaanalysisd?

You might be wondering, what is com.apple.mediaanalysisd anyway?

The com.apple.mediaanalysisd directory, typically found at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd/, holds the cache files for the mediaanalysisd daemon.

The mediaanalysisd process runs in the background and when the Mac is not in use, analyzing the Photos library of pictures, media, and videos, for object and facial recognition. For some Mac users, the com.apple.mediaanalysisd directory is filled with many gigabytes of cache .bundle files.

How to Fix com.apple.mediaanalysisd Consuming Storage Space on Mac

While sometimes you can simply restart the Mac to recover the bloated mediaanalysisd cache storage space, that doesn’t work for everyone.

It’s a good idea to backup your Mac with Time Machine before committing to this operation. To save disk space, these instructions are going to instruct you on deleting the cache files within the com.apple.mediaanalysisd folder. If this directory is not consuming an inordinate amount of disk capacity and limiting your Mac storage, there is no need to perform this operation.

1. Backup the Mac
2. From the Finder, pull down the “Go” menu and choose “Go to Folder” (or use Command+Shift+G for the Go To keyboard shortcut)
3. Enter the following path:

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

4. Hit Return



5. Confirm the “com.apple.mediaanalysisd” directory is taking up an unusual amount of storage by using list view, or selecting it and using Get Info (Command+i) or Quick Look (spacebar)



6. Select and drag the “com.apple.mediaanalysisd” folder into the Trash
7. Empty the Trash with a right-click “Empty Trash”, to recover the disk space

Your disk space will be recovered when the Trash finishes emptying.

What happens when you delete the folder?

You might find that the Photos app may need to rebuild the photos library, and you might trigger a variety of facial recognition, object recognition, and other detection and machine learning tasks.

This also means that you might delete the large cache folder, only to find that it has grown large again within some time.

With one user on Apple discussions reporting up to 140 GB of medianalysisd cache files on their Mac, and another on Rumors Forums reporting 80GB of caches, there are also multiple other mentions of this on everywhere from stackexcahgne, reddit, MacRumors Forums, and the official Apple support forums. How widespread the issue is is not clear, and if any particular feature or combination of settings triggers the huge medianalysisd cache folder, or if it’s just a bug, is currently unknown.

It’s worth mentioning that some users reported the problem resolving after updating to MacOS Sequoia 15.2, but there are also users who did not notice the problem until after they installed a MacOS Sequoia update (myself included, I noticed my Mac ran out of disk space and discovered 50GB of mediaanalysisd caches which I cleared, and a few weeks later another 20GB had rebuilt itself). Be sure to install any available system software updates to MacOS Seqouia, as updates very well may resolve the issue.

Have you experienced the “com.apple.mediaanalysisd” cache directory taking up huge amounts of storage on your Mac? Did you delete the cache files? Did they return again after some amount of time? Did you find another solution to resolve this issue with MacOS Sequoia? Share with us in the comments.