Photos stuck in loop of "Analyzing Scenes,Detecting Duplicates,Curating,Composing,Gathering

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Photos stuck in loop of "Analyzing Scenes,Detecting Duplicates,Curating,Composing,Gathering

I just got a new 2020 MacBook Pro 13" with Catalina. I transferred my iPhoto library in from my old 2010 MacBook Pro. The first time I opened "Photos" app, it went into a loop of "Analyzing Scenes, Detecting Duplicates, Curating Best Photos, Composing Layout, Gathering Favorites..." It has been doing this for about 20 hours now. A similar Communities post appeared around 19 Oct 2019, with over 150 people saying they had similar problem. There was never a solution posted that time. Has anyone figured this out? Should I just quit the "Photos" app? or do something else?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Aug 9, 2020 11:12 AM

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Answer 1

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DevBiology Author

Level 1

42 points

Aug 9, 2020 12:07 PM in response to léonie

Wow! Thank you! That is so very helpful to know! I wish that Apple Corp would put this information into the opening screen of the Photos app for the benefit of those of us using it for the first time!

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

197,047 points

Aug 9, 2020 11:49 AM in response to DevBiology

Just wait. This process needs a lot of time. Depending on the size of your library it may take several weeks.

How many photos are in your Photos Library? For my smaller test libraries with just a thousand phots it took three days. For my larger libraries two month, for my main library with 50000 photos it has not yet finished.

It does not really matter, because we can use Photos while these background processes are doing their job. Keep the Mac connected to power, and if you are using iCloud Photos, connected to Wi-Fi, and wait. You may want to occasionally restart your Mac to kick off the photo analysis processes again. And make sure, that your Photos Library does not contain any items in format that can no longer be processed by Photos 5 on Catalina.

Convert older videos to a compatible format, remove all PDF files from your Photos Library, or other legacy media,as described in the list for iMovie, see: About legacy media in iMovie for macOS - Apple Support

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Answer 3

DevBiology Author

Level 1

42 points

Aug 9, 2020 8:20 PM in response to léonie

Thank you Leonie! The curation process just now completed. It took about

30 hours for 82 GB from my iPhoto library, with 16,310 photos and 29

short videos. It is interesting that the Photos library is now 73 GB. So

I presume that the new Photos app compresses the data more efficiently than the old

iPhotos app.

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

197,047 points

Aug 9, 2020 12:46 PM in response to DevBiology

I wish Apple would remove the notice about ""Analyzing Scenes,Detecting Duplicates,Curating,Composing,Gathering". It is just irritating as we cannot do anything about it, especially on a portable computer. We simply need to unplug it frequently, to carry it with us.

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Photos stuck in loop of "Analyzing Scenes,Detecting Duplicates,Curating,Composing,Gathering

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