Photo's stuck on Catalina?

I've been dealing with this same issue since release day of iOS 13 and Catalina. Like others, I've tried everything:

• Repaired library
• Deleted main library and then re-downloaded the entirety of my iCloud library
• Signed out of iCloud and back in
• Gone through every video, slow motion, etc.

My library is synchronized to multiple machines, all running Catalina. On some its on an external SSD, others its on the internal drive. Some are optimized, some have all images downloaded. On every machine, the progress bar has stopped at the same point. Additionally, my iPad Pro, iPad mini, and iPhone, are all stuck at the same point.

On a whim, decided to open another photo library that contained more photos and videos than my iCloud Photo Library....it finished curating in less than 8 hours.

Since I have the space on one SSD, I've decided to duplicate my iCloud Photo Library and see if it curates. If so, that would help isolate the issue to some sort of communication with iCloud. I'll report back on my findings.

That is indeed strange. I was able to import and export photos during curation, but I was only doing it with photos in a folder on the desktop, not a card. Two thoughts:

1. Have you tried using Image Capture? I've always found it to be much more reliable than Photos. Perhaps you can import the card to the desktop, then import the items from there?
2. Have you tried importing the photos from the card with the card still in the camera (i.e., using the camera as the reader)?

Could be an issue with the camera and card with Catalina as well. What kind of camera and card are you using? Could also be another program interfering with Photos ability to read the card.

I went to look at the People album. I looked at a couple of people, then Photos crashed when I opened the third person. I re-opened Photos and the app recovered without restoring from scratch. A report was sent to Apple but I am not sure this is very useful. And the progress bar was still stuck with nothing happening. So I am trying again. I deleted the photo library. Emptied the waste basket. Waited a couple of hours. Created a new one. Made it the system library. And triggered a restore from iCloud again. Last time took nearly 3 weeks so I will be posting an update in 3 weeks.

Signing out then back in is a nuclear option. I've done that 3x over the course of 6 going on now 7 weeks. That begins a new, lengthy process all over again.

For example: I deleted my old library, and decided to download a fresh one from iCloud. It went pretty fast except it was stuck on the last 5% of the library for 4 days. I tried logging out and back into icloud. So, now, the computer and iCloud are talking one another and the Mac is "uploading" all the downloaded pics already on the Mac to iCloud (which is where I got them). I'm 20% through this process in 8 days. 2.5% of the library a day, thus far.

Something is wrong here and it won't be remedied by steps like these. Where is the bottleneck? 900/750 Fios internet, 72GB of memory, 2019 3.6GHz 8 Core Intel i9. It's moving at a snail's pace. It's absolutely absurd. And, every remedy begins a new process that moves at a snail's pace, likely toward the same conclusion.

Stopping your iCloud upload halts the current progress but does not delete any progress already made. Once you then restart iCloud the upload progress continues from where it left off. It does not start over again because some of your photos have already uploaded to your computer. I had over 90K photos and over 100 videos when I initially started the process. My progress bar stopped uploading with 8K photos left to upload. It was at that point I turned off iCloud. When I restarted iCloud it started at the point it left off, with 8K photos left to upload.

I ended Catalina misery after downgrading to Mojave.

After upgrading to Catalina I spent days until Photos upgraded and curated.

But downgrade didn't resolve photos library as Mojave was unable to load it.

Got support from Apple to extract pictures from the library and recreate a new one at the cost of loss of albums.

Catalina issues not limited to photos.

It started to freeze and crash very frequently and memory got saturated.

At last I'm able to use my McBook Pro as usual.

Photos from my old iPhoto Library were the only photos that appeared in the Photos app after The Mystery Event (which I suspect has something to do with Norton). Option/Photos let me select the Photos Library instead upon relaunch of Photos. After a brief (5 second) process, (the details of which I don't remember exactly) Photos is back to normal, i.e., it contains photos from the consolidated iPhotos and Photos library...and with the added subscript "Fully Curated." This was more of a directory solution; not a files solution.

I completed yesterday people (about 20 days for 32000 photos) but the bar “ analysing favourites, duplicates, etc.” is still about 50%. Therefore the two processes people and analysis are not the same.

Mine is doing this on my iPhone 6s and all I did was flippin sign out and sign in to icloud etc. Ridiculous. And had to sign out and in because messages had stopped working properly. So all a problem of apple’s own making

Finally I have completed the scan. I don't know if relevant but I have installed a new sw Canon - Canon digital photo professional. I have a Canon reflex. The photo library scan was completed in less than a day. It is possible that the OS system is missing of certain raw drivers that are included in the new Canon pack. Therefore my suggestion it is try to update the sw of your reflex camera.

Although I was finally able to access Photos on the MBP it just wasn't downloading the photos I was taking on my phone and loading into my iMac from my camera's memory card. So I phoned Apple who were very helpful and, in the end, the only thing they could think was that there was something wrong with the external hard drive that the library was on - so I copied the library to a new EHD and now it seems to be OK in terms of downloading recent photos - but the total number of photos and videos is showing as 62 less than the iMac and the iCloud website - why, I have no idea! There was nothing wrong with the EHD before I downloaded Catalina. I also miss Aperture - particularly the ability it provided to be able to edit 2 or 3 photos together to make sure that colour balance and exposure were as similar as possible with a view to merging them to make a panorama.

Give it time, it took nearly 4 weeks before my iMac was finished. 😕

Hi.

It stays the same.

Try to find the corrupted Photos and/or Videos and it will finish in 2-3 Minutes.

My MacBook Air with 30,957 photos has been curating best photos loop for three days now. The same thing is happening to my wife's MacBook. I guess its going to take several weeks for the new Photos app to curate all of our photos. Wow!

Well... approximately 30 hours total and it is finally done. There are still lots of other things that are now struggling. The People section acts like it is going through its processes, even on photos that have been tagged for years.

I hope Apple can speed all this stuff up, or tell us why it is worth the wait.