How to create a Smart Album with just "Unnamed" People.

I just want to create a Smart Album to show all the "Unnamed" people. I have used confirm additional faces now need to do the rest by hand.

I recently upgraded to Catalina 10.15.6 and my Smart Albums for all "Unnamed" people are not working

Apple Photos Version 5 (161.0.120)

2016 MacBook Pro Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports

3.3GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7

16GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

Old Smart Album recipe (Person "is" = "%") shows zero pictures

New Smart Album recipe (Person "is" = "Blank") Shows all pictures with people, not just the "Unnamed" AND "Unnamed" faces are hidden from view so it's useless.

Here's a screen shot of one of the pictures.

  1. Face Names are not hidden
  2. "Unnamed" face circle not shown
  3. "Unnamed" face is displayed in the "Info" pane
  4. + to add face is gone, program is crashing, but usually there with issues 1-3

Since the plus was missing to add a face, closed and reopened the Photos program

Program reopened with the same picture and had the "Unnamed" face circle, but it was actually named even though the Smart Album Recipe was blank

Then when I scroll down just a little Poof, the face mask is gone, I don't know what happens, program crashing, a bug, I don't know.

Very frustrating, I just want to create an album / report with all "Unnamed" faces. Currently 89K photos so too large to do by hand.

Never had a program with this many issues.

Here are the issues I've had since upgrading. Thought I would list them all in case someone notices a pattern, or is having the same issue or some suggestions.

  1. Program is very slow since the upgrade (no lag before)
  2. When Adding Keywords, I press enter and the focus is lost, the blinking cursor is gone, have to click with mouse to enter a new keyword, this makes it 100's of time slower than before when I could just keep typing keywords.
  3. Smart Albums are Broken: person = % does not work (old smart albums to view "unnamed" people don't work)
  4. New Smart Album Person = Blank does not work (shows photos with Unnamed, Named and Nothing) Big mix of all photos with a person, I just want "Unnamed"
  5. Looking at a picture with an "unnamed" person assigned by Apple, the face is hidden. Info window shows the person, but photo is blank (no face circle)
  6. Program often locks up after tagging keywords for 5-10 photos
  7. Program Locks up after tagging 5-10 people
  8. Importing photos, Ctrl + A only highlights 110 photos (must be careful on large imports of more than 110 pics to not miss photos) Ctrl + A works just fine in the Finder
  9. When importing 100's of photos, if I go a little too fast, several photos are missed, however it appears to work just fine. So I need to be careful and watch the count. I can go back and import again, if I go very slow, make sure all the files are highlighted (count to 10) the "New" photos are recognized and imported, but very scary
  10. When adding a new person, they are placed at the bottom of the people page, not in alphabetical order
  11. When Adding people to a photo, I enter their name, but it does not appear from the drop down list. Work around I've found is to create a new name and then merge the two people together
  12. Select multiple photos, go to assign a location in the info window and it keeps flashing away and erases what I've typed. I start to type, then the cursor disappears and erases what I've typed so far, stuck in a loop until I reboot the app and works a few more times before stuttering again.
  13. When scrolling through photos, the photos flash masked with a grid that looks like a vector clear background with alternating Green and Yellow checkerboard patterns, very annoying.


Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

MacBook Pro 13″, 10.11

Posted on Sep 5, 2020 4:39 PM

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6 replies

Sep 5, 2020 7:56 PM in response to Barney-15E

That's good, I'm glad Apple Photos is working for you.


My program is always updating faces, never been an issue in the past. Converted 2 months ago, maybe I should let it just sit here for 6 months and try again?

8 importing from iphone and macbook pro hard drive

9 Not uncommon to import 600 -1000 photos if you only have 2k photo you probably don't run into this issue I'm guessing

10 People album has a sort order, that is not working. If you think that's typical, I'd like to know how to fix the sort order

Thank you



Sep 6, 2020 3:08 PM in response to Barney-15E

I usually import pictures directly from the iphone via the Photos App on the MacBook Pro.


I just created a new file, tried to import 6144 photos and the thumbnails never populated after 15 minutes on the Import Preview window, so that must be over the limit.


Instead I was able to import 400 photos. then waited an hour for the people screen to finish updating.

Successfully labeled a few people's unnamed faces

Created a Smart Album with the following recipe person "is" = "Blank" and got 150 pictures

I went through and labeled about 15 more people in 50 pictures and the smart report did not change, still 150 pics.

Closed reopened the Photos app, recreated the Smart album with the same recipe person "is" = "Blank" (not typing blank just leaving blank)

and the report is the same, includes all the pictures with people unnamed and named and unnamed with just one person. So the program appears to be broken to me, does not appear to be a data or database issue.

Wonder if you have any more troubleshooting steps or recommendations, maybe there is a way to uninstall / Reinstall Photos? Maybe I need to reinstall Catalina, maybe there was a failed upgrade. I've never seen a program with so many little issues.

Thanks.

Sep 5, 2020 5:25 PM in response to jasonc447

I used blank for Person is and it seems to work.

I didn't validate the whole 2K+ photos, but fifty or so I went through seemed to only show photos with unnamed faces.

Perhaps give it some time to do all of its catalog processing of the photos.


  1. Might be because it is running all of its recognition routines.
  2. I noticed that happened while it was still trying to recognize people and things. I haven't seen that since that ended.
  3. Person = <anyone> (that's what you tried) should show you ever photo with a "face."
  4. Seemed to work for me.
  5. There are a lot of things it thinks are faces. AI Algorithms aren't perfect.
  6. See 1.
  7. See 1.
  8. Where are you importing from?
  9. ??
  10. Sounds like typical database function. Tables have no inherent order. It is not until you query them again can you order them.
  11. I have only seen that on people I have never entered. Perhaps related to 1.
  12. See 1.
  13. Not something I can remember seeing. Again, may be related to 1.


Sep 6, 2020 4:01 AM in response to jasonc447

How are you importing from your iPhone? Image Capture or the built-in import in Photos?

The import window in Photos has always been slow to allow selecting all because it has to scan the phone and create thumbnails for every photo to import. The Select all button would not be available until it completed the thumbnail process.


I don't import photos anymore as they are all uploaded to iCloud from all of my devices. I did recently download a few thousand photos from iCloud and import them into Photos. You can only download about 900 photos at a time from iCloud, and I had four folders to import, so three to four thousand. I didn't run into a problem importing them.


The 2,000 photos were the result of the Unnamed Smart Album. There are just over 10,000 photos in my Library.


10 I don't see any way to sort the list. The original set was sorted, but new entries are not sorted and there is no method to sort the list.

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How to create a Smart Album with just "Unnamed" People.

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