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Photos Stuck at “0 photos scanned” Since iOS 15 Upgrade

Since upgrading to iOS 15 when the final release came out, both my iPhone 11 Pro and M1 iPad Pro are both stuck at “0 photos scanned”. They have been plugged into high-powered chargers every night, but they’re still stuck at 0. I do have a large library (70k+), but previous versions have always scanned through my Library after updates.


Any idea what can be done to kick off the scanning? Anyone else experiencing this?


Thanks.

Posted on Sep 23, 2021 7:32 AM

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44 replies

Nov 29, 2021 11:48 AM in response to John Osborne

Again, same problem. I have a new M1 Air laptop and an 8th generation iPad, neither restored from backup. Both got off to a good start but for the past week are doing less than 10 a day, it was doing almost 10,000 a day for the first 4 days but keeps slowing down. I have about 45,000 pics in my library and have about 1,750 left to scan. Have been pretty much leaving both devices alone and plugged in. Have rebooted each of them every day to see if that helps.

Dec 1, 2021 4:52 AM in response to John Osborne

I have the same issue.

My picture library incudes about 65000 pictures/videos. Through iCloud is have access with in iPad, an IPhone12 and an iMac. On all three devices, a different number of pictures was scanned, but no device scanned them all.


The formerly found persons in the last years are all present, but some of them show on the iMac only that that there is a person on the picture, but no circle around the picture.


And all three devices scanned a big bunch of pictures, but stopped then.


I hope, Apple will fix this annoying situation soon.


Thanks.

Dec 1, 2021 5:29 AM in response to Bellemer

I got tired of this problem when I did an experiment and had only one photo in my library. The People Album still did not populate automatically (even though I can label the detected face manually in the photo).


I've now migrated to Google Photos which is doing everything Apple Photos does and more since it works across multiple platforms more seamlessly (and is cheaper for storage).


For now, the main feature that iCloud Photos offers ahead of Google Photos is that the photos are still synced onto the local device for easy offline viewing.

Dec 5, 2021 6:17 PM in response to mrchntmarine

Ok, Here's what I did to solve it! (Your milage may vary). FWIW - tool dozens of hours to troubleshoot / fix with 50k+ files.


Best I can tell, the analysis gets stuck or won't start until uploaded to iCloud is complete. Here's what I did to fix:


1) remove non-compatible files. For me I had about 30 photoshop files (.psd) that were holding up the process. Use Smart Folders to identify and then export and delete. Other threads have the list of file types.


2) remove corrupted files. this one is harder, as I had 50k+ files. The problem files were mostly movies. And most problems were slow motion. Use smart albums to filter and then export. There was one .mov fie that would crash photos if opened. Hard to spot, but it was blurry in preview and/or colors off in preview


3) *duplicates*! I have a large number of dups from prior imports and mergers. Most are OK , but some causing problems. To solve:


  • check if the number of items on local cpu are same as iCloud. For me, there were more local than in iCloud.
  • Then identify those that are not uploaded. (Smart Folders for "unable to upload" won't work!)
  • For each year (or month) identify number of pics/mov - manually scan if there are more local than iCloud. Find the duplicates and then delete (or export) from local. All of mine were associated with HDR where the camera also captured raw or jpeg.
  • Repeat for all years/months (I had once cpu w/ download originals, and one with iCloud photos optimize to compare)
  • once number of pics locally = number of pics on iCloud; the analysis proceeded ok!


All in all, was a pain in the A** but it does work now


Dec 6, 2021 6:36 AM in response to j_i_

I tried the reverse but still didn't work. I deleted all photos from my device (mobile and laptop) and downloaded again, assuming that would remove any "problem" files. It has only been 24 hours, but it has only scanned about 10% of the files on both devices. My phone has never had the issue with "scanning" but other than the update, nothing has changed. The laptop is new and the iPad was recently reset.


I have looked at Google but I don't like the interface, editing is not as good, and since a lot of my photos are scans of old photos, the date and location is wrong.


Adobe Lightroom picked up the metadata in the Apple files and correctly brought over the dates and location. But then it is a $99 annual subscription and a messy interface. But the editing is better than Apple.


Both are better at recognizing faces than Apple, but Google has no way to "add a face" when it does not recognize it.


I am tempted to stay with Apple even if it doesn't complete recognizing faces and live with the fact that some will not have names attached. Photos has always been my favorite Apple application. But this has got to be a software issue.

Jan 9, 2022 2:25 AM in response to John Osborne

I bought a new iPhone 13 Pro at the start of december 2021 with iOS 15 on it. It imported all photos nicely from iCloud and started scanning faces at night. But then it stopped and was stuck at about a remaining 8000 for weeks. Even after upgrading to iOS 15.2.

Last night I tried the following:

  1. Close the Photos-app
  2. Switch off the iPhone
  3. Start the iPhone
  4. Plug it in the charger


When I clicked on the peoples album this morning it finally stopped showing this message and all people where populated with a lot more photos (and a lot I had to confirm).


Also posted this as an answer to my own question on https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253509631.

Jan 9, 2022 6:39 AM in response to Nanko Bouman

It happened to me on desktop upgrade to Monterey 12.1. It was stuck on "finish scanning" for almost a week. Tried creating a new profile and forced a complete download (just over 11,000 pics) but still no luck. I reinstalled the o/s and it reached about 90% scanned with 4 hours. The remaining 10% took more than a day. Lost some face names and continue to have problems with names syncing, including losing a lot of names.


Like the person above, I looked at Google and Lightroom. Google is web only, messy, default editing is not as good and no option for additional editing plug in. Lightroom is just a messy interface but it is better at editing. Both are better at recognizing faces and then associating names. It is missing the map and locations are only by Metadata. It only brought some of the metadata over. They also are better at showing missing names.. My library is large enough I have to pay for additional storage so the $99 a year is not a really big deal. Neither one brought over "folders" or corrected dates on pictures that were not taken on a camera. I have pretty much decided to stay with Apple Photos and realize that faces/names will not be complete.

Photos Stuck at “0 photos scanned” Since iOS 15 Upgrade

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