crontabconf.md

automated reclaiming RAM from macos' pesky background services

Edit ramcleaner.sh to kill the processes that tend to balloon RAM usage. medianalysisd is the main culprit; it often gobbles up 3-4GB RAM in random spikes, which is prohitive on the base mac mini 16GB that I run as a home-server.

This bash script searches for the service by prgrepping active processes and kills what it finds. When OS services are observationally equivalent to viruses, they ought to be treated accordingly.

Schedule it by running crontab -e and entering the following, which runs the cleanup script every 2 minutes and logs its actions to ~/.ramcleaner.log.

*/2 * * * * /bin/bash ramcleaner.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

ramcleaner.sh

#!/bin/bash

# ramcleaner
# Terminates mediaanalysisd process if running
# Designed for cron execution with proper error handling

# Set strict error handling
set -euo pipefail

# Log file location (optional - comment out if not needed)
LOG_FILE="$HOME/.ramcleaner.log"

# Function to log messages with timestamp
log_message() {
    if [ -n "${LOG_FILE:-}" ]; then
        echo "[$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')] $1" >> "$LOG_FILE"
    fi
}

# Function to kill process by name
kill_process() {
    local process_name="$1"
    local pids
    
    # Get PIDs of the target process
    # Using pgrep for reliability (more robust than ps | grep)
    if command -v pgrep >/dev/null 2>&1; then
        pids=$(pgrep -x "$process_name" 2>/dev/null || true)
    else
        # Fallback to ps if pgrep not available
        pids=$(ps aux | grep -E "^[^ ]*[ ]+[0-9]+.*[^]]${process_name}$" | awk '{print $2}' 2>/dev/null || true)
    fi
    
    if [ -n "$pids" ]; then
        for pid in $pids; do
            # Verify the process exists before killing
            if kill -0 "$pid" 2>/dev/null; then
                # First try SIGTERM (graceful termination)
                if kill -TERM "$pid" 2>/dev/null; then
                    log_message "Sent SIGTERM to $process_name (PID: $pid)"
                    
                    # Give it a moment to terminate gracefully
                    sleep 1
                    
                    # If still running, force kill with SIGKILL
                    if kill -0 "$pid" 2>/dev/null; then
                        kill -KILL "$pid" 2>/dev/null || true
                        log_message "Force killed $process_name (PID: $pid) with SIGKILL"
                    fi
                else
                    log_message "Failed to kill $process_name (PID: $pid) - may require sudo"
                fi
            fi
        done
        return 0
    else
        # Process not found - this is normal and expected most of the time
        return 1
    fi
}

# Main execution
main() {
    # Kill mediaanalysisd
    if kill_process "mediaanalysisd"; then
        log_message "Successfully terminated mediaanalysisd"
    fi
    
    # Also kill related processes that might respawn it
    # photolibraryd and photoanalysisd are related services
    kill_process "photolibraryd" 2>/dev/null || true
    kill_process "photoanalysisd" 2>/dev/null || true
    
    # Optional: Clear cache to prevent immediate respawn
    # Uncomment if you want more aggressive prevention
    # rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.mediaanalysisd 2>/dev/null || true
}

# Execute main function
main

# Exit successfully even if no process was found
exit 0