Photos freezes (spinning pizza wheel) when in edit mode

It looks like Photos cannot access the original image files. Is iCloud Photos enabled on your mac? Is "Optimise Mac Storage" enabled for your iCloud Photos Library? The video components of the Live Photos and the depth map of portrait Mode Photos are frequently optimised first, because they need a lot of storage.

There are several possible reasons for Photos not being able to access the files:

• Lack of storage on your Mac - do you still have plenty of free storage?
• Lack of storage in iCloud - if you are running out of Cloud Storage, iCloud will no longer work properly.
• An incompatible file system format: What is the format of the file system where the library is stored? The format must not be case sensitive, or Photos may not be able to access the files.

Log into another 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).

Also log back into your primary account and download and run Etrecheck. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support  to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and use the Add Text button to include the report in your reply. How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report

IMPORTANT:

Before running Etrecheck assign Full Disk Access to Etrecheck in the Etrecheck's Privacy preference pane so that it can get additional information from the Console and log files for the report:

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine what might be causing the problem.

After turning iCloud Photos off, and then back on, and waiting for the interminable "Restoring" process to finally finish, this problem seems to have, at least for now, for me, been fixed.

Of course, because Apple has chosen to focus on political activism rather than products, it's no surprise that there's now another, all-new, showstopper bug that's now popped up for me. Now, for every single photo in my library which I have edited, when I click to open it to full size (or arrow left or right to progress to it), all I get is a blurry, artifacted mess that appears to simply be the thumbnail blown up. If I click Edit, the full-res version instantly appears, indicating that it's not for lack of the full image being downloaded, but rather just because yet another Apple bug is rearing its head.

Download and run Etrecheck. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support  to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and use the Add Text button to include the report in your reply. How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report

IMPORTANT:

Before running Etrecheck assign Full Disk Access to Etrecheck in the Etrecheck's Privacy preference pane so that it can get additional information from the Console and log files for the report:

Also click and read the About info to further permit full disk access.

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine what might be causing the problem.

Are you running the latest system and Photos versions?

Have you run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up" or anti-virus apps on your Mac. 

Agreed. We just want to rule out any 3rd party software that might be contributing to the problem like MacKeeper, CleanMyMac or some anti-virus software.

Jeffrey,

I've had the same exact issue for the past week or so.

But Photos' failure is evidently larger in scope than to what you (initially) narrowed it down to.

I am seeing this behavior, which renders Photos beyond inoperable for me, on every picture, whether taken on an iPhone or imported from one of several other cameras.

I have well over a TB of free iCloud space, and Optimize Mac Storage is turned on by necessity on my MacBook Air (because Apple's abandonment of magnetic storage for the benefit of a few mm of thinness means that I can no longer store my entire ~1TB Photos library on my laptop without paying an extra couple of grand for that "privilege".)

So, since I was no longer able to edit any photo in Photos, I restored it from iCloud. It's only partially done restoring my library of ~90,000 photos/videos, but I'm still seeing that same exact behavior. As soon as I click Edit, the transparent busy wheel in the bottom right of the photo spins, for hours, and without end. If I immediately click done, the edit mode closes... obviously without any editing taking place. (Does anyone remember the old "it just works" Apple? Those memories are but faint now.) And if I actually try to edit a photo, the apple will freeze until restart. So maybe, once it's done restoring my library in another day, it might work... but it really doesn't look promising at this point.