How to force Photos to update index of metadata or faces

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Level 1

77 points

How to force Photos to update index of metadata or faces

Hi,

I have thousands of photos and have written titles and descriptions for all of them. Most have faces tagged. However, ever since the update to Big Sur, search function in Photos does not recognize almost any of my titles, descriptions, metadata, or faces. It says it will update while photos is in the background, but it has been MONTHS and I leave it on all the time with sleep turned off so it can crank in the background. Still search results give me just a few results while ignoring the 100-1,000 that I need. I feel like photos has become useless for organization.

Is there anyway to FORCE the photos app to update its index?

Faces also tells me it will update in the background but never does.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Jul 14, 2021 10:26 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

200,495 points

Jul 15, 2021 11:10 AM in response to Willo

ow are you searching for metadata?

Since macOS 10.15 Catalina Photos cannot search for text inside a word. Use search terms that are appearing at the start of a word or a separator like "_".

One common reason for Photos being unable to scan the library again are legacy media inside the library. Since macOS 10.15 Photos can no longer handle all media format, that it could handle on the earlier system versions. You may want to check, if all videos and photos on your library are in a format that Photos can process. One bad Apple could block the analysis of your library after the upgrade. I have converted all videos either to HEVC or H.264, and all image files are either JPEGs, HEIC, or RAW files. You could use smart albums to weed out legacy files, see: How to Weed out Legacy Media in Photos for Mac - Apple Community

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Answer 2

SnickZ.

Community Specialist

Jul 15, 2021 9:12 AM in response to Willo

Greetings, Willo.

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities. We can understand why you’d want to resolve the issue with Photos not recognizing your titles.

Have you tried to repair your Library? If not, check out: How to use the Photos Repair Library on your Mac

We hope this helps! Thank you for being a part of the community.

Sincerely.

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How to force Photos to update index of metadata or faces

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