It’s happening again: at the exact moment when you need your Mac, you discover that something is mysteriously slowing the machine down. The machine is getting hot since the processors start running at 200%, eating into the battery life and ruining your whole day just because your crippled computer is preventing you from getting your work done.
One such ‘CPU hog’ is a process called PTPCamera. Users running older versions of macOS have noticed that after plugging their iPhone or a camera into their machine, the Mac begins to slow down and the battery drains at an alarming rate. So, what’s causing this?
If you were to check out what is killing the Mac’s CPU via Activity Monitor, you’d see that the biggest task for the machine seems to be a process called “Picture Transfer Process for a Camera” (PTPCamera). It’s worth noting that the issue is version dependent, so users of newer versions of macOS may not suffer this problem.
Please note that quitting the PTPCamera process via Activity Monitor has no side effects and is recommended any time you notice high CPU usage. Install iStat Pro for constant system monitoring and non-invasive reporting to help you spot the issue more easily.
So that deals with the problem at hand, but what is this PTPCamera process and why does it put so much pressure on a Mac’s CPU? Well, as its name implies, this process is responsible for transferring pictures from an external camera to iPhoto or the Photos app. The process is continually checking USB-connected devices – iPhones, iPods, iPads, etc. – for new media. If a new connection is detected, the Photos app or iPhoto is launched and the picture transfer starts.
The reason PTPCamera causes your Mac’s CPU to work harder varies by device (or at least by macOS version) but it seems to be a bug related to a specific combination of devices and system software. As reported by users in Apple StackExchange, this isn’t likely to happen on macOS 10.13 High Sierra, but it can be reproduced on Macs running OS X 10.11 El Capitan when connecting an iPhone.
If you experience high CPU usage caused by the PTPCamera process while transferring images using iPhoto or Photos, try switching to Image Capture. This is another built-in utility for transferring images from external cameras to the Mac.
Let us know in the comments below if you have noticed the PTPCamera process hogging up your CPU’s resources and be sure to include the macOS version you are running. If you know a better way to stop this CPU hog, share your solution in the comments!
István F.
Adam B.
I’m running Monterey on a MacBook Pro and PTPCamera opens whenever I connect my iPhone 13 to my laptop for charging. This didn’t happen with my older iPhone X. I get an alert from CleanMyMac and force quit it every time. Very annoying and I wish there was a way to not have it turn on my default.
Hello Nancy, and thank you for your comment!
In order to have your iPhone 13 to stop syncing your images automatically, you need to:
Open Finder and connect your device to your Mac using a USB cable.
Unlock your device.
Select the device in the sidebar of the Finder window.
If prompted, trust your device.
Click the ‘Photos’ tab below your device’s information.
Deselect ‘Sync Photos’.
Click ‘Apply’.
Let us know if these steps solved the issue. Have a nice day!
This is not true. PTPCamera is needed for file and photo transfer. If you kill it, file access, ongoing transfers, etc, will also be terminated.