Photos 5.0 is constantly crashing on Catalina 10.15.2 on my Mac Book Pro. What to do?

The Photos app in version 5.0 is constantly - and I mean constantly - crashing on Catalina 10.15.2 on my Mac Book Pro.

The color wheel is in swirling away constantly. Stops, lets me do one action (such as selecting a photo) and then whirls away again. It is getting worse to the point where I am not even able to get into the edit mode. This is only on my Mac Book Pro, not on my iPad or iPhone. I do have "Clean my Mac" installed - does that have anything to do with it?

Grateful for useful recommendations!

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 26, 2020 2:56 AM

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

200,897 points

Posted on Jan 26, 2020 4:03 AM

Is Photos actually crashing and creating a crash report, or is it just busy and unresponsive? If Photos is creating a crash log or you are seeing a error message, please post this message, so we can what the reason is.

How long ago has the update to Catalina been? Did you just upgrade?
How much free storage is on your system volume? Try to keep at least 20GB free (really free, not just "available") during the initial scanning of the library.
Is your Photos Library on an external volume or in your Pictures folder?
Could it be that you are having older videos or image files in your Photos Library? Photos 5.0 on Catalina can no longer process all codecs, that could have been used without problems in Photo 4 or older versions.
Are you using iCloud Photos?

You can check, if your Photos Library has a problem, by creating a new Photos Library and importing a few photos and videos. Is Photos running well, without hanging, on a new Photos Library? See: Create additional photo libraries in Photos on Mac - Apple Support

You can also check, if you have incompatible software installed, that is causing problems for Photos, by restoring your Mac in Safe Mode: Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support

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Photos 5.0 is constantly crashing on Catalina 10.15.2 on my Mac Book Pro. What to do?

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