Photo's stuck on Catalina?

Had this same problem last night. All I did was quit photos and then restarted my Mac. Opened photos and it finished it 30 seconds.

Fixed in 10.15.1 update.

I installed the update.

Restarted.

Opened Photos.

Restarted.

Opened Photos and it was done.

well mine just finished....

so I had 2 issues during this

1. Some video files that , once removed , helped it run a bit further. Easy enough to spot them by just hovering over them when autoplay was on though i only had a few hundred.
2. Unable to upload some files though it didnt tell me which ones (THIS ought to be something the process tells you rather than just sit there laughing at you
3. Running the repair took some odd pictures and marked them as unable to be uploaded - I exported them , deleted them then re-imported.

Restarted Photos and it finished ina few hours ..

So in my case Im pretty sure it saw some files as corrupt - the challenge is in identifying them - hope that helps someone...

After about 4 days, here's how I fixed this problem on my iMac: System Preferences --> Energy Saver. I checked the first box, "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off."

The process is (1) find out whether there are damaged items in the Photos library (not only .avi types but any type of resource), (2) repair the Photos library and (3) let Photos take its sweet time to finish curating all the photos in the library and updating the People tab.

In my case, it eventually stated "Curation Complete – Photos and videos are curated when your device is connected to power" when I last attached the external HDD with the Photos library. As for People, it "will finish updating when Photos is in the background."

It took a while, going about its business when the external HDD was attached and the Photos library mounted (between 12 and 22 October) and the Mac was connected to power.

Over and out.

10.15.1 update seem to have also fixed it for me, although there was nothing about Photos listed under the release notes, so it's also possible that just time passing with the charger on did it. If you have the same issue, it worth trying the update, though. Indeed, I had the computer charging (and connected to a good Wi-fi) for a couple of hours before I checked - I was busy with something else - but when I started Photos afterwards it said that curation was complete.

After updating to Catalina on my iMac and attempting to restore my Photos Library, my 95,000 photographs stopped uploading with around 3,200 pictures left. The answer for my problem was in an Apple Toolbox article which suggested I sign out of my iCloud account and then sign back in. This worked for me! The only caveat I have is that in order to sign back in to your iCloud account you will need your Apple ID and login password. This might be problematic as there are instances when folks entering their Apple password discover that it is not "recognized." I had to enter my password in three times before I was allowed back into my account. This has also happened to me in the past and eventually I had to resort to changing my password to gain access. You can read the Apple Toolbox article here: https://appletoolbox.com/how-to-sign-in-and-sign-out-of-icloud-on-macos-catalina/

I hope this helps!

After updating to Catalina on my iMac and attempting to restore my Photos Library, my 95,000 photographs stopped uploading with around 3,200 pictures left. The answer for my problem was in an Apple Toolbox article which suggested I sign out of my iCloud account and then sign back in. This worked for me! The only caveat I have is that in order to sign back in to your iCloud account you will need your Apple ID and login password. This might be problematic as there are instances when folks entering their Apple password discover that it is not "recognized." I had to enter my password in three times before I was allowed back into my account. This has also happened to me in the past and eventually I had to resort to changing my password to gain access. You can read the Apple Toolbox article here: https://appletoolbox.com/how-to-sign-in-and-sign-out-of-icloud-on-macos-catalina/

I found this solution that worked for me with Photos on Catalina.

It appeared to be something related to Face recognition. I just clicked on the "people" tab, left Photos idle, then after any people processing finishes, waited a minute or 2, and the curation also completed.

After two months il tried again to find the issue.

I've seen today that when i cmd+a all Pictures and try to export them with cmd+shift+e, il get an error. Then i've tried just a bunch, and it would have worked, but ive canceled. I've scrolled with the arrow key through the pictures i've suspected to be corrupt, but nothing happened. You have to "esc" and "double click the pictures to get the error (if there is one). Like this i figured out where my corrupt pictures where. I have seen that a smart album with a textfilter on "iPhoto Original" just filters them out a little, but not all of them where corrupt. Maybe curration can be done now... but time will tell.

Sharing my experience for the record since I spent the evening yesterday reading through this post and others.

My library of 7821 photos and 353 videos (total about 80gB) on a USB 3.0 external drive (no iCloud) took about 3 days to curate. Due to the lack of progress info I was also convinced it was stuck at 90% with the only feedback displayed: "gathering favorites, detecting duplicates, curating best photos, composing layout".

I did not do anything special, I did a few restarts anyway and as other have pointed out the curation process runs independently and continues if interrupted.

I did follow the advice to look for corrupt files but found nothing so in the end for my case it did finish but it would have been nice with a progress bar to indicate that it is advancing.

TpGn70 said that he/she found old .avi video files that wouldn’t play. The process completed after these videos were deleted.

About 36 hours later and "Curation Complete." 26,500+ photos and almost 1000 videos stored on an external drive. This was painfully slow.

Still almost 16,000 photos remaining to be scanned for "People."

Here is something I noticed when battling some perceived syncing issues with Photos on Catalina: If your Mac is doing other things, almost anything... it may not actually be processing or syncing. I have an external CalDigit hub as well and it seems rarely if every do I get a photo to sync with iCloud when its plugged in. If I unplug all external monitors and put my machine to sleep about 5 minutes later things start syncing, faces get scanned etc.

I was looking in the Console at any "photo" events and keep seeing this:

501:com.apple.cloudphotod.sync.discretionary-when-background:761523:[

{name: ThermalPolicy, policyWeight: 5.000, response: {Decision: Absolutely Must Not Proceed, Score: 0.00, Rationale: [{thermalLevel >= 1}]}}

 ], FinalDecision: Absolutely Must Not Proceed}

This led me to shutting everything down and letting my Mac cool down.

I've never had issues like this before Catalina on my iMac or MacBook so it seems as though there might be some extra checks happening.. or my aging hardware is running hotter than usual with the new OS.

I have a new iMac coming next week and will see if things change with 2019 hardware. (My late 2014 iMac was bricked by Catalina.. a whole other discussion)

I *doubt* this is the fix but maybe some of you can try making sure your machine is free of external devices and is nice and "calm"... maybe that will speed things up a bit.

Finally- I have been trying for one month. I am not sure I can say what did it but I did the following based on others notes. Most photo’s are on iCloud and my Mac.

1) I had the same appleID on two accounts on my MAC. I signed out of one I do not really use.

2). I still could not get the photos to check off under I Cloud on the other account. So I signed out of the other account. I restarted my computer and logged back in.

3) I believe those two things did it, but I also emptied out all the items in my trash. I am not sure that had an impact but if the first two do not work try it.

i was then able to convert the library in one hour. Good luck.