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My mom has about a 280gig photos library about 40,000 and videos. She got her iMac in 2019 with the 1TB drive so it has a lot of free space but looking at photos and even making small edits is a pain as it is so slow and will freeze and the pinwheel will pop up and she cant do anything. What would cause this? She is up to date with the newest OS and only other use is the internet for email and such.
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
280GB is not excessively large and should not be causing any problems.
Does she use any security software, or cleanup sofware (such as "clean my mac"?)
It might be worth trying these checks:
Initial Tests
1 - Create a new empty library, import some images to it, and try with that library open (hold down the option key while starting photos, and click "create new". To switch back to your currently library afterwards, do the option key start again)
2 - Try booting in safe mode - does it still happen?
3 - Try creating a new user account and try when logged into that account.
These checks will tell us if the problem is system wide, or linked to a particular library or user account.
280GB is not excessively large and should not be causing any problems.
Does she use any security software, or cleanup sofware (such as "clean my mac"?)
It might be worth trying these checks:
Initial Tests
1 - Create a new empty library, import some images to it, and try with that library open (hold down the option key while starting photos, and click "create new". To switch back to your currently library afterwards, do the option key start again)
2 - Try booting in safe mode - does it still happen?
3 - Try creating a new user account and try when logged into that account.
These checks will tell us if the problem is system wide, or linked to a particular library or user account.
I know I am late to this thread, but PLEASE do not replace the internal drive! Use an external SSD as your boot drive instead! iMac was never intended to be opened by users, and doing so can cause permanent damage to the iMac. Here's a User Tip on instructions: How to Setup and Use an External SSD as y… - Apple Community.
-Jack
The problem may lie more in her iMac configuration then in the library itself.
What model ID is her iMac?
Is it a 21.5" or 27" unit?
How much RAM does it have?
What system is running on her iMac?
Has she installed or run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up" or anti-virus apps on her Mac?
I have a copy of her library on an external usb 3 drive and tried to open it on my macbook other then the little bit of slowness I expect from it being an external drive it seems to run ok.
I used to have Sophos on it but removed it to see if this would help and did not notice a difference.
I did not try safe mode or creating a new user yet. I was thinking about replacing the main drive with a SSD like I did in my mac as I feel like it takes a longer time to start then it should but I was not sure if that would help.
I don't have the ID right now but its the Early 2019, 21.5 with 8gb ram updated to 11.4 Big Sur with the standard 1TB HDD (no SSD or Fusion Drive)
It used to have Sophos Home but I removed that to see if this was the issue and it did not fix anything.
I used OnyX after she started complaining and that seemed to help with the slowness of websites but not much more.
It has all the standard apple apps plus firefox and I think that is about it. Photos and internet/email is all she uses it for.
I also have a 1TB usb drive for Time Machine to backup her pictures but I disconnected this when I was doing some testing and that also did not change anything.
iMac 8 GB with HDD is going to be slow no matter what, and there’s no good internal upgrade option available.
Installing an external Thunderbolt SSD or USB 3.x SSD (not USB 2.0!) will alleviate a whole lot of the slowness, pending a replacement with an iMac better suited to the current usage. But this slowness is a fairly common problem with the 21.5” iMac with an HDD.
If you want to look further at this, download and run EtreCheck, and share the report to the clipboard. Then open a new reply here and then press the button that looks like a printed page to get a text input box big enough to paste the hardware and software configuration report here. That report might show some other issue(s), but an iMac with 8 GB and an HDD is going to be slow on recent macOS regardless.
Well its no longer under warranty so I am going to swap out the normal internal drive to an internal SSD, I have done this before for my mac so it should not be an issue. Also when I say editing pictures she literally is just cropping pictures and using the fix tool to get the random telephone wire out of the sky.
So I did end up replacing the HDD with a SSD and it’s like a brand new computer. No issues with apps, editing photos or looking at the pictures on the Apple TV. It was definitely an issue with the drive and other then getting the display off (thanks Apple for marking that so hard) it was easy to swap out. I wish it was as easy as the older iMac screen that was held on by strong magnets.
Could it be Big Sur scanning the photo Library for;
Might be worth trying first aid on your system drive to make sure there is nothing wrong with it.
Though certainly an SSD is likely to make a huge difference.
Photos for mac very slow and freezes is there a photo/size limit?
