Mac Photos Smart Album can't find any of the thousands of pictures of me

When I search for my name with a smart album, it is also empty. I can find all photos of me, when I search only for my first name and do not include the last name. My last name has two parts, combined by a hyphen. Perhaps that is making it hard for Photos 8 to find it.

As a work-around I am searching with two rules, combined by "Match all".

• Person includes "my first name"
• Person includes "the start of my last name".

Well, you don't look like someone who has disappeared! And it's weird that (off the subject) when I first tried to post the screenshot with my name in it, I got a message that said it wasn't allowed. I blurred my name a tiny bit, and it posted. How'd you get away with it?

Have you restarted your computer? Try re-starting in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this: 

           Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support 

You can try repairing the Library, but that can confuse iCloud for a while, if you use iCloud to sync Photos on your phone and Mac.. To repair, you close Photos and then re-launch by option-command-clicking the app icon. A dialog will come up asking if you want to repair. If you do use iCloud, it might be worthwhile to disconnect the internet (turn off wifi) when you do that. It'll be surprising if this works, but this name business is surprising.

Here's an alternate method you could try:

1 - in the People view click on your face batch and then click on Show More.

2 - select the first of the Show More photos and do a select all (⌘+A).

3 - bring up the keyword pane (⌘+k), create a keyword for you and apply it to all of the photos selected.

4 - do the same for your mother.

5 - create a Smart Album with the following criteria:

That should give you all photos with both you and your mother in them.

Note: Be sure to set it to Match all.

Well, that's pretty scary. I can see this as the beginning of Stephen King story!

The first thing I think of (well really the second thing, after "it's an omen") is: is it possible that that you are listed in the people view with different names? When you use the Smart Album "Person = Includes = " you get a menu of possibilities. Look through the list to see if there's another version of you.

Let us know what you find...

Try going to the People view, choosing yourself and clicking on your name.

You can enter the name or nickname you want, there. Maybe that's not what you expect...

The search function does not do well with hyphenated words or partial words, like looking for boot in "bootstrap". That's why I use keywords for all persons listed in the People view. Just so much more efficient.

Using Smart Albums with keywords is always more effective. I try to keyword every person in the family library. Glad it's working for you.

The search function does not do well with hyphenated words or partial words

Right-- I have a keyword "Matt" for pictures of Matt, and I have a keyword for "Matt's Pic" for pictures that Matt took with his camera. This is fine for Smart Albums using keywords, but if I use the search field looking for Matt, I get him and all the pictures he took.

ADDENDUM: when I try the same with Persons I get zero hits with All. I guess that particular smart album feature is broken.