Catalina Photos Problems

Log into another vanilla admin user account, Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac,  and see if the problem persists. (This tells us if the problem is limited to your user account or is system wide).

Next, boot into Safe Mode (How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support) by booting with the Shift key held down and check there to see if the problem persists.  Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing. 

I thought the problem had resolved itself. I had a telephone session with Apple Support when the advisor took over my screen on my iMac. He could find nothing wrong. However:

1. Despite adding new images, my designated library on my external drive, which I used without problem before Catalina, does not appear to increase in size and "last modified" does not change. My settings are for all photos to be copied to this external library.
2. Occasionally, but less often, all my images are displayed in very low resolution and are effectively unusable.

All my other devices are connected to iCloud and display the photos in full resolution (MacBook, iPhones x 2, iPad, Apple TV. I can upload images and they are all there, but for some reason my main library on external drive is not getting bigger. I cannot get any answers from Apple.

More information further to my post of 9th November.

I usually add images to my Photos library by:

1. Automatic uploads from iPhones via iCloud
2. Import from my SLR's SD card to my iMac
3. Saving images sent by family and friends to Photos on the device where they were received

My iMac and MacBook show the same number of images and videos so there must be synchronisation. Nevertheless, the file size and last modified date of Photos Library on the external drive attached to my iMac is not changing as the number of images increases. Also, tags and descriptions I have added to images on my iMac do not appear in Photos on my MacBook, and vice-versa.

My main viewing platform is on my TV via Apple TV box. That is working as usual, so meets my needs. However, there definitely seems to be something wrong with overall Photos file storage, editing and synchronisation since Catalina.

major problems with photos!

1. import (RAW) from picture file is not done chronologically which is problematic to check a series of lets say 50 panorama pictures that I want to stitch together in 1 big pano.
2. edit a big panorama photo, then click done results in a download problem, a ! -sign appears on the photo and when reopened, the photo has lost all detail, so the tool edit cannot be used or the panorama photo is destroyed.
3. also tried to export with a downsizing lets say a custom height = 1500 pixels. This resulted in a height of only 511 pixels instead of 1500. Also tried to export with a height of 1000 pixels and this too resulted in a height of only 511 pixels.

conclusion: Catalina Photos is a total mess, I am looking to go back to Mojave if they cannot resolve the issues soon.

I'm very close to doing the same. Catalina and Photos has been a disaster for me.

• Shared folders no longer appear in my sidebar
• Hangs when creating a new album
• Hangs when deleting an album
• Hangs when clicking on "People"
• Can't enter location information (after typing the first letter, the field goes blank)
• Can't name people in photos (after typing the first letter, the field loses focus)

I'm not a programmer, so it doesn't feel fair to judge them, but this has really sucked as a user.

I guess most people commenting on this forum have already contacted Apple direct but have not been given a solution to their problems. I have contacted Apple several times about Time Machine and Photos issues, but apart from speaking with a very friendly Apple technician, I am no closer to solving my problems. I, like many who have commented, have been using Time Machine and Photos (before that Aperture) with external drives for years without problem. Since Catalina there are multiple problems to which no one seems to have any answers. I suppose I have used this forum inappropriately by venting my frustration through it. That was not my initial intention, but all I see are other equally frustrated long-term Apple customers with Macs that used to work well and are now problematic. Apple should be providing solutions. My only consolation is that it so many people are having the same issues that it must be a system problem rather than me doing something stupid.

To comply with the purpose of the forum, my problems, for which I would welcome suggested solutions are:

1. Time Machine external drive fills up and back-ups stop as drive has inadequate space. However, the external drive has 3x the capacity of the data stored on my Mac's hard drive. Old back-ups are no longer being deleted to make space for new.
2. My main Photos library is, and always has been, on an external drive attached to my iMac, although I use iCloud to be able to view images on other devices. In the past, whenever I added to new images, the modification date and the library size would change immediately in Finder. There now seems to be a lag of days or even weeks before any changes are reflected in Finder.
3. In general my iMac is less reliable. I get frequent app crashes and and spinning beachballs that never happened in the past. My newer MacBook Pro is less problematic, but still not as responsive or stable as it was in the past. I have stacks of free hard drive space and RAM.

I have the same problem and two more:

1. It takes a lot of time to detect the newly added photos when I click "Import". In Mojave it takes at most 10 seconds to find all new photos and "dim" the old duplicate ones but after upgrading to Catalina it takes at least 2-3 minutes to read the photos from my external drive
2. After import I need the rainbow icon appears and i have to force quit my Photo app and restart it.

Where has your Photos Library stored? Did you keep it in your Pictures folder or on an external volume? And where did you create the new library? By default, you should craete a Photos Library in your Pictures folder.

I've told it to use the new Photo Library as the main System Photo Library, but this still hasn't sorted it.

The Photos > Preferences > General should look like this, with the option "Use as System Photos Library grayed out:

When it is dimmed, you should be able to click "Photos > Preferences > iCloud Photos".

And also enable it in the System Preferences > Your Name > AppleID > iCloud > Photos.

You cannot make a Photos Library your System Photo Library, if it is on an external volume, that has an incompatible file system format or is used for Time Machine backups.

After half an hour with tehc support they told me to boot in safe mode... It did not work, but I got a puzzling piece of info. The "Photos" section of the library was gone, and thus, I was not able to see if it was still "curating my library" or not. See attachments. You can also see that many pictures have just gray thumbnails...

I had this type of issue on 4 Macs. The Macs won't sync but the IOS devices would. One lost the library and then was blank. It wouldn't sync with the cloud either. I had to re-install Catalina on each of the Macs from the recovery boot. It fixed them all. BTW it took nearly 24 hours for them all the get in sync.

Hi John. Since i’ve update to Catalina photos app has been running oddly. Library is synched but auto rotation of raw camera images is not working properly. I’ve posted my issue in another discussion but i wanted to know if this is affecting your device too. Ty

I've done things which might have helped (but I am floundering around like a walrus up a cliff):

I ran Disk Utility on my mass storage Pluscom device and my camera SSD cards. I ran it on all the volumes visible and ran it twice on some which showed Fail and then they worked.

I one-by-one removed every icon from the Dock and dragged a new icon from Applications just in case an icon was pointing to out-of-date stuff. I went through the App. folder opening each one and checking settings and viewing any dialogues presented. I deleted the Brave browser which I had been trying out. I went through my Keychain and viewed all the passwords and deleted out-of-date Keychain passwords (they do date I have only just discovered so I think obsolete Keychain items MIGHT confuse the computer). I would now say I am happy with Catalina and Photos seems to have settled down, for now.

Same problem here. Takes "forever" to upload small videos and watch on mac fine on iphone and sometimes doesn´t allow me to edit a specific photo tells me some cannot edit crab. And sometimes displays just blurry version of the photo. I hate it.

I have Catalina 10.15 have not updated further. Now have micro software that works ($300 plus) and downloaded new Indesign (another $300 plus). Have all pictures 35,00 on Lightroom Cannot export any of them to my desktop or anyplace else. They are on an external drive. I still have all the pictures on another external drive that I used when I could use Aperture. Not very familiar with lightroom. Where do I start to make things work? New computer PC? Am just about through with Mac. Do not really need all the bells and whistles with Adobe, though really liked Indesign. thanks for any tips.

Margaret

I agree as well. Catalina has been a mess. All sorts of problems, particularly with Microsoft Office and photos. Why can't they leave stuff that worked perfectly well alone???? My devices seem to be okay - it's my iMac, which I just bought a few months ago.