Extremely long slide show

Good afternoon dougmac2023,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!

It sounds like you are getting ready to create a slideshow on your Mac. Have you ever done this before?

Check to make sure you have enough storage space on your Mac for this new project.

Although you can create slideshows in Photos app, iMovie is the best app for this, as it gives you more features and ways to control the elements of your slideshow. iMovie is the consumer level video editing software for Mac. Final Cut Pro X is the professional version of this software.

Here is some general information for creating slideshows:

If you create an album for the photos you want in the slideshow, then you have the flexibility to move them into the order that you want.

Photos must be in the library on your Mac. If you are using iCloud Photos, and have the "Optimize" option enabled, you'll need to download the photos from the iCloud to work with them in this project.

Make sure you've imported any photo or video attachments from emails and texts, and that you have imported photos from shared albums.

Create slideshows in Photos on Mac - Photos User Guide

iMovie User Guide for Mac

Set up and use iCloud Photos

Have fun!

You'll need plenty of free space on your boot drive or the volume where you'll be saving the movie file. How much free space do you have?

Also it will probably take a long time to compile and save the movie file so make sure you don't have any other apps running and turn off putting the Mac to sleep. Just have the screen saver working.

We understand dougmac2023,

However there is no hard or set amount of slides or size that Photos will stop working at. It's all very dependent on the content and the machine running it, so everyone's experience may differ.

Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities!