Photo library won't quit updating

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Level 1

72 points

Photo library won't quit updating

My iMac has a large USB disk where iTunes, Photos, and lots of just plain old files reside. That drive crashed, so I bought a new one, formatted it to the same name as the old drive, and had Time Machine restore it from the Saturday backup. Things are mostly normal. iTunes works. Can find all my files. Photos will start and show all my photos from Saturday and before. However, we have more than that.

I have Photos in iCloud Library enabled. All these new photos I mentioned show up on our phones, our iPad, and my work MacBook Pro. But Photos on this iMac has been "Updating..." ever since Sunday, and still does not have any of the new photos from this week.

When will this stop? Is this a problem? Should I delete the Photos library and restore from iCloud instead of what I did (restore from Time Machine)? THanks.

Posted on Dec 6, 2018 3:38 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,537 points

Dec 7, 2018 8:11 AM in response to bjurasz

I am missing the Activity viewer from Aperture too.

But Photos has only the status line (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205409)

You may want to check the two smart albums mentioned in the link above, if you have any problematic items in your library.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,537 points

Dec 7, 2018 7:20 AM in response to bjurasz

Photos will first upload your restored library to iCloud and merge it into the existing iCloud Library, before it will download any new photos. for a large library of more than 40000 photos and videos this initial upload can take more than a week.

It might be quicker to start over with a new, empty library and to let this library download the photos from iCloud. This should work, if all your photos are currently in iCloud. You will save the effort to merge the two libraries in iCloud.

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Answer 3

bjurasz Author

Level 1

72 points

Dec 7, 2018 7:26 AM in response to léonie

Thanks. Glad to know how this all works, and especially the time frame it will take. I'm already 4 days into this merge process so at this point I'll just let it continue. Aperture used to have an Activity window, so you could tell what it was doing and if it was making progress. Would be nice if Photos had something similar, rather than just "Updating..." :)

Next time I have a new disk, however, I'll restore everything from Time Machine except for the Photos library. That I will restore from Photos in iCloud instead.

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