Photos not scanning faces on MacOS Monterey

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Level 1

4 points

Photos not scanning faces on MacOS Monterey

Dears,

I have about 11.000 pictures that faces did scan since I am using this library, but about 40.000 are not being scanned.

I tried quite a bit incl. letting the macbook run overnight with the app open, with the app closed, without power saver mode etc.

Not a single foto was scanned.

I read that some old file formates would not be supported in 64-bit, but I was wondering if that was truly the issue and how I could scan for this file formats. Going through the library checking 40K pictures and trying to find out which one might be an old file format is not an option without a tool solution.

Does anyone have a better hint than the file format topic? Or do you know of a way to scan the library for those file formats?

Or even better, is there an add-on that checks and simply transfers the old file formats into new ones?

Would be great to get a solution as this is pretty annoying when you work with smart albums that people are not recognized.

thx

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 12.5

Posted on Nov 29, 2023 7:17 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

203,517 points

Nov 29, 2023 7:51 AM in response to Sharivani_4

Do you have old videos in your library? Then I would first check the videos, if they are still compatible.

To check the videos, select them all together, then export them with File > Export > export unmodified original to a folder on your desktop or wherever you are having enough free storage.

Then create a new, empty library and import the exported videos to the new test library. Any video giving an error message on importing will need to be converted to a different format.

To check your photos for legacy formats you could use a smart album to point out all photos with filename extensions that are neither jpeg not heic (or any of the file formats most common in your library, that Photos can process). How to Weed out Legacy Media in Photos for Mac - Apple Community

In my library I had to remove all PDF files, all audio files, some QuickTime movies and AVI movies, and quite a few Live Photos that I had created from videos with Into Live Pro. The Into Live extension had added a video component with an incompatible format

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Answer 2

Sharivani_4 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 30, 2023 12:21 AM in response to léonie

Hi,

so, I tried the smart album variant, but I tried to setup the smart album now twice and Photos is refusing to create the album......Even though it showed me that the issue could come from only 12 GIFs.

if I look for .gif in Photos it shows me pictures. However, it refuses to delete them.

Searching for the 12 .GIFs in the library folder itself does not lead to anything. Apparently I cannot search the content of the Photos library directly.

This is slightly frustrating. Any ideas for these 12 GIFs?

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Answer 3

Sharivani_4 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 29, 2023 9:48 PM in response to léonie

Thank you Leonie!

😅 for working on a Mac that work does sound a lot like a Microsoft process.

I’ll try the version with the smart album.

I would have hoped for a smoother solution.

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Photos not scanning faces on MacOS Monterey

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