Photos app stuck on "Restoring" Screen after Catalina Update

I've spent hours on same issue. I have all my photos on an external hard drive (1.6TB). It did the "updating" ok it seemed (updating of the photo library), but after the first restart of the computer, the photo library had to go thru a "restoring" process. It will stay at 0% for a long time before it finally does anything. It finally did restore. Apple said it has to go thru each photo (280,000 in my case) before it starts the actual restore (filling the blue line in with a %). The photo library did come back but will do this restore after EVERY shutdown or restart of the computer. It takes a LONG time to restore! (most of a day). There has to be a glitch in Catalina. It has done it now with 10.15 and 10.15.1. Exact same behavior. APPLE please help!

I think they’re unrelated. I managed to get Photos back up and running by leaving Photos restoring (it took 10 hours) and then leaving the computer on with Photos closed. The issue seems to be related to Photos scanning all the photos for the facial recognition. I kept opening Photos every couple of hours and opening the People folder to check progress. The important thing was not to switch the computer off. I have 37,000 photos and left the computer on for 48 hours. It now seems stable , I can switch the computer off, restart and the Photos library opens without problem. I also had the Java popup at the same time but the two issues seem unrelated. This link was useful to sort this problem after Photos.

https://superuser.com/questions/1048562/which-application-is-triggering-a-to-use-the-java-command-line-tool-you-need

For me it was the “com.facebook.videochat.USERNAME.updater” causing the problem. I deleted it manually (not with terminal) from the Library/Launch Agents folder and it seems to have sorted it.

I’m no expert. It’s been trial and error, piecing information together from various forums and just waiting for the computer.

"Try repairing the library: launch Photos with the Option + Command keys held down"

Thanks for this ! The repair ran to 100% completion in a few minutes on the MBP 16,1 but then did not progress further. Already 1 hour looking like this:

Force quit out of Photos and launch again. See if that will jumpstart the restoration process.

If the Mack went to sleep it started over. My photos are on an external drive. After I gave it admin permissions it loaded for about 10 minutes then finished restoring.

Maybe it is too early to be sure, but at the moment it looks like it is working now. After updating to OS 15.1 and restarting three times again with rebuilding the library for 10 hours approximately, now I can restart photos and even restart the Macbook and the program starts without problems. I hope it will remain like this.

I'd force quit Photos and then re-open it normally.

To update on my previous post. The repairing remained at 0% for about 3 hours, then started to count and finished within another 10 hours. The library then just worked fine, but after closing Photos and restarting the computer, the same procedure started all over again, although this time the total time needed was "only" eleven hours. Looking into the library folder, it seems the files psi.sqlite, psi.sqlite-wal, Photos.sqlite-shm and Phtos.sqlite.lock were changed within the first few minutes, and then it took almost elven hours to modify Photos.sqlite and Photos.sqlite-wal. As far as I can see, nothing else was modified.

Catalina changed the folder and naming structure of all media stored by Photos application.

That is why it takes so long to "restore" your library. Because Catalina wants to RENAME all your media files to random names !

Beware! After this "upgrade" you won´t be able to recognize your folder MASTERS structure anymore!

Because now they are in Originals folder, BUT Catalina "played" with the older logical subfolder structure (as was it in MASTERS folder). So now you just see folders from A to Z and from 1 to 9 where ALL your media files ARE RENAMED to random long names.

Now it is nearly impossible to find your media file without PHOTOS app.

That is why I have stopped using Photos app. I want to be able to drag and drop my media files, I want to keep their logical names and date structure.

How is that external HD formatted and connected to your Mac?

How is the external HD formatted and connected to your Mac?

What system and Photos versions are you running?

I have been having same issues with photos. I've been attempting to migrate from older iMac to a new iMac. I am frustrated beyond words. Apple Support has been no help at all. They have no good answers. They just keep shoving me off to another 'Senior Advisor' or someone from the Creative Media section. Never get the call backs they promise ( waiting for one as we speak that was supposed to happen 45 minutes ago). They apparently are clueless as to how to fix this problem even though it appears to be a wide spread problem.

I am in the process of trying to export my raw images from my old iMac. Once that process completes (hopefully) I will then attempt to copy to external hard drive and import raw images into Photos on new iMac. I will need to get Photos to launch which I think I will be able to do by creating a new empty Photos Library.

All in all a dismal effort on Apples part.

All of you that experience this issue, do you have Time Machine on the same partition?

If so, is Photos library included or excluded within the Time Machine?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250805248

I had the same hope but the problem continues. After the last update I checked Photos was working, it was and opened immediately. I switched the computer off but the following morning when I switched it on it was back to the restoring screen. It took 10 hours to work through it, then worked fine. Again after switching the computer off Photos then when back to restoring taking another 10 hours. So it works fine as long as the computer is on, but closing down somehow causes a problem. I logged an issue with Apple yesterday and will do so again today.

You were told wrong. It's perfectly OK to have the library on an external HD as long as that drive is formatted as shown in this screenshot:

and connected to the Mac by cable.

More information can be found here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support