Photos app stuck on "Restoring" Screen after Catalina Update

After updating my 2018 MacBook Pro to Catalina, I let the Photos app run the process of updating my photos library (which is slightly larger than 1TB). This process took just under 24 hours to run, so I was very happy when it finally finished running. However, the next time that I launched the Photos app, it just said "Restoring..." and a progress bar underneath at 0%. I have let it sit and it never progresses past 0%.

Beyond frustrated at this point that after updating my library for Many hours, I'm still unable to access my photos library. Please help!

MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 21, 2019 8:31 AM

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SenseOfLife Author

Level 1

32 points

Posted on Dec 2, 2019 8:30 AM

@AVADHOOTGUPTE Have you tried the solution that ended up being a fix for me? Here's what I posted a couple weeks back:

The new step I was instructed to do this morning was to edit the permissions on the external hard drive which stores the photos library. Even though my user account was set to read and write, and the checkbox to "Ignore ownership on this volume" was checked, she had me add Administrators to have full read & write access to the hard drive, and then click on the gear icon below permissions to select "Apply to enclosed items..." That part can take a long time to complete if it's a large hard drive. However, after that completed, I restarted the computer and opened up Photos. It had a little delay in opening, but not long and it's now going through the curation process. I was told to let that keep running...if I do have to stop it (which I will for going to work tomorrow) it should start back up from where it left off. She said that this process shouldn't take more than 48 hours, and at that point, fingers crossed...I'll be back up to running normally.

Since then I've been able to again use my Photos library normally. Try this out, I hope it works for you too!

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79 replies

Bmmmm

Level 1

23 points

Dec 22, 2019 4:42 PM in response to SenseOfLife

Guess what? Same freaking problem here... updated to catalina... At first Photos was acting normally, but then I noticed that my latest photos aren't downloading from iCloud. And at the bottom of my "all Photos" page there's a message that says "Restoring from iCloud". It's been sitting there for about 4 hours (Just to download the last 10 photos taken?).

Awesome sauce, apple!

lindros2

Level 2

212 points

Dec 24, 2019 4:16 PM in response to Old Toad

@old toad - this doesn't help.

Unless this is tested, this can actually corrupt the photo library FURTHER.

I now have this issue - also - on Catalina.

Photos for Mac (and iCloud Photos) is one of the most poorly tested services - that we pay for via iCloud storage. And it is the one that breaks most often.

And Apple iCloud has been a reliability disaster the past few weeks*. If Apple is going to broadcast to Wall Street that "services" are driving revenue, they need to replace whatever imbecile is running it now.

*Look at iCloud service status [link removed]

lindros2

Level 2

212 points

Dec 24, 2019 4:18 PM in response to SenseOfLife

This was, apparently, caused by a failed video upload from my Mac. It wasn't a large video file (88MB), but big enough that it corrupted my library's sync with iCloud. This is now the 50th problem I've had with iCloud Photos, and it's quite upsetting.

Dec 25, 2019 8:46 AM in response to SenseOfLife

The exact same thing was happening to me, but I didn't check or uncheck any boxes in System Preferences or edit the permissions... I was running Photos off of a 4 TB Western Digital HDD... which was slightly slow to begin with, since it was an HDD. After I updated to Catalina, the "Restoring: 0%" issue arose. I did a little research, and determined I should probably get an SDD to run Photos more smoothly overall, and having a drive that can read/write faster than my spinning drive was just generally good idea.

I got a SanDisk which was preconfigured and ready to read Mac's computer language. I plugged in both my WD drive and the new SanDisk drive at the same time, and dragged & dropped the Photos App from the WD drive to the SanDisk. It took about 14 hours to completely transfer everything (almost 1.5 TBs). I was worried that it might not work at first because for almost an hour and a half it said "preparing to transfer Photos" so I thought it would freeze or crash.

I let my computer take a break overnight, and the next morning, plugged in the SanDisk again, and tried to open Photos. It took about 8 - 10 mins for it to restore (it started with "Restoring: 0%" again...) but Photos is up and running again!

I'm not sure if what SenseOfLife suggested would have worked because I didn't find this until after the transfer was completed, but upgrading to a faster drive might help fix your problem too.

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Photos app stuck on "Restoring" Screen after Catalina Update