I suspect this is 10% of the reason why System Integrity Protection exists. Yes, it's great to stop malware, but it's even better to save your frontline support from having to deal with people who decided that it'd be a good idea to delete the dyld shared cache because it's 15GB and ""doesn't look useful"" https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250117852

For those not aware, that file is the equivalent of all of /usr/lib on Linux. It is, quite literally, most of the core OS above the kernel.

That looks like an excellent opportunity to name that better.

Generally agree, but I'll be damned if its ever not one of Photoanalysisd (unused, disabled, empty, but yet scanning), AirplayXPCHelper (often stuck at high CPU, my TV which it shouldn't be able to see, and my neighbour's, both sound output options, yup - weirded out by this tbh), or Spotlight (system deletes system file, Spotlight keeps attempting to read anyway and crash).

These programs came bundled, I don't use them and disabled what I could from any GUIs. It is always them causing problems, hardly ever the ones I want and use.

I think photoanalysisd can be turned off. In Photos, go to preferences and turn off memories.

Not so unfortunately. The com.apple.CloudPhotosConfiguration also remains up (icloud sync is disbled, so not sure what cloud it's hoping to configure).

Similarly, "ScreenTimeAgent" is there even with the feature disabled. AppleMusic and AppleTV daemons scan for caches throughout the day - never opened either. There's also "gamecontrollerd", "studentd", some iMessage and FaceTime related stuff, etc. etc.

And on a system where you've disabled all analytics/tracking, turned off Siri in all places [1], disabled dictation and all other voice input related options, you even keep your microphone muted when it's not in use, even then, "corespeechd" will send out several MBs of data to Apple on every single boot.

Most of this is nothing more than very unexpected and strange behaviour. The exceptions being those 3 apps that keep tripping over themselves, those actually destroying my battery and fans. A little less unintentional obscurity, maybe some official descriptions for these processes, just some communication, that would go a long way.

[1] Siri settings are scattered throughout, a lists exists though: open Preferences > click button "Siri Suggestions & Privacy" > click button "About Siri & Privacy" button > click bu... eh wait click heading "Siri Suggestions" - yes that black print > then, finally, all the places are listed right under where it says "You have choice and control".

I'm just going to list them here because it's ridiculous:

You Have Choice and Control

You can turn off Ask Siri or Dictation at any time. To turn off Ask Siri, go to System Preferences > Siri, then turn off Listen for ‘Hey Siri’ and Enable Ask Siri. To turn off Dictation, open System Preferences > Keyboard > Dictation and turn off Dictation. If you turn off both Ask Siri and Dictation, Apple will delete Siri Data that is associated with the random identifier.

Request history associated with a random identifier and retained for six months or less can be deleted by going to System Preferences > Siri > Siri History and clicking Delete Siri & Dictation History.

You can control which apps can integrate with Use with Siri at any time by going to System Preferences > Siri > Siri Suggestions & Privacy > [app name] > Use with Ask Siri.

You can turn off Location Services for Siri by going to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy, then selecting Location Services. Click the lock to make changes and enter your password, then deselect Siri & Dictation in the list of apps and services to the right.

If you do not want Siri personalisation to sync across your devices, you can disable Siri by going to System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud and deselecting Siri in the list of Apps on this Mac using iCloud.

You can also restrict the ability to use Siri & Dictation altogether by going to System Preferences > Screen Time > Content & Privacy > Apps > Siri & Dictation.

You can control which apps use Siri for transcription by going to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Speech Recognition.

The thing with Apple is, you can never tell whether this is genuinely done to protect people from breaking their workflows that rely on these features, or because they just really want that data.

And if this really is Apple just looking out for you, they could have added a small warning to the "disable" option about the sort of functionality you'd miss out on. It all comes back down to a lack of communication or trust.

Been there done that now knows better than to do the way you described, but still an uncomfortable thing to me to run modern OS on a modern system.