Smart Album "Album is not 'Any'" not updating correctly

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Level 1

8 points

Smart Album "Album is not 'Any'" not updating correctly

Hi,

I'm having an issue with Photos for Mac.

While trying to sort through my uncategorised photos, I created a Smart Album to find all photos not in any album. This seemed to work correctly, but then I accidentally added all the photos to a new album I created. Obviously this meant no photos appeared in my smart album.

The problem arose when I decided to delete the newly created album. I assumed this would once again mark these photos as having no album as they had been 'released' from this album, but they are still not showing up in my Smart Album.

I tried deleting and redownloading my photo library from iCloud, but it doesn't seem to help. Looks like the album is still assigned the photo in the metadata maybe. Anyone know if this is a bug and how to correct this?

I'm on Catalina 10.15.1

Thanks,

Robbie

MacBook Pro 13”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 7, 2019 8:17 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,723 points

Dec 7, 2019 8:50 AM in response to robbiedeane

That is a new, recent bug in Photos 5.0, see: Problems with the Smart Album "Album is not Any"- Apple Community

We have to be sure to remove all photos from an album, before we delete an album. Or Photos will still see the photos as being in an album.

We would have to duplicate all photos, that are listed as being in an album and then delete the original to fix this. This would be a lot of work.

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Answer 2

robbiedeane Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 7, 2019 9:08 AM in response to léonie

Thanks for the clarity.

For now, as a somewhat tedious workaround, I have created a new Smart Album with a rule for each album in my library (i.e. Album is not "Album X", Album is not "Album Y", and so on..). Duplicating and deleting the photos should get me back to the original state

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

197,723 points

Dec 7, 2019 9:16 AM in response to robbiedeane

Do you know the name of the album that you just deleted?

Sometimes it helps to enter the name of a deleted album into the search field, and the photos, that have been in the album, might be found. If you are lucky, you should be able to find the in one place this way.

I hope, the next Catalina update will fix this.

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Smart Album "Album is not 'Any'" not updating correctly

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