Photos isn't working!

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Photos isn't working!

After buying a MacBook Air M2 (8‑core CPU, 10‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine

24GB), I just bought a Mac Studio M2 MAX (12C CPU/30C GPU/32G/512GB) - because I finally wanted to be able to use my Photos library again.

Since some times I can't use

People & Pets

because "Review More Photos" will show "There don't appear to be any additional photos of xxxx."

and even scrolling was slow.

I've rebuild the database. Downloaded it again. Looked for permission errors. etc etc etc

It's pretty annoying when you can't find pictures of your dead dad or other photos that are important to you.

Finally I thought it might be the speed and/or memory bandwidth of my MacBook, so I bought a Mac Studio.

My Photos library is around 1.1 TB - and was on a very fast external NAND drive (> 2600 MB/s read and write).

I downloaded all original photos to that drive.

But often I can't even change the name of a person in a photo. The Photos app just won't accept it - and I have to redo it several times and suddenly it will work, but sometimes it will disappear again after a few minutes.

Or when I would like to assign a name, the name that I used before won't show as an option to choose from, then I will enter the name manually - and I will end up with two people having the same name. Afterwards I have to merge them.

BTW I have 2 x 1 Gigabit internet with a load balancing router.

With the new Mac Studio M2 MAX this should be better or so I thought.

In fact it's a bit better but for it to work better I had to move the external (system) photo library to the internal SSD.

Unfortunately the internal SSD is not big enough so I had to change the setting from "Download Originals to "Optimize Mac Storage".

So everything seemed to work better on the internal SSD until it reached a certain size and now the old problems are back.

Now it does not even show all people and pets, but more people are visible on my iPad Pro.

It's really annoying and I can't understand why Apple isn't fixing the problems anymore. I found so many Mac owners having the same problems on Reddit, message boards and in this forum. They are all looking for solutions and can't find any.

The funniest idea to solve this mess is always to split your library - and then what... reassign the names manually to 50000 photos?

I've now ordered a Mac Mini with 2 TB internal SSD. If this won't fix the problem, I will sell all my Apple devices.

PS: I just found an old photo in Photos with 10 people on it. It took some time to figure out the names of the people on this photo because they are all dead relatives. I've assigned all the names and made a screenshot to send it to my mom. Now all the names are gone except for one. How does this even make any sense?

Mac Studio (2023)

Posted on Apr 16, 2024 7:11 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 16, 2024 8:29 AM in response to Wolfgang Gaebler

Wolfgang Gaebler said: My Photos library is around 1.1 TB

1.1 TB is very large for a Photos Library. Photos relies heavily on doing background scans and cataloging, and the size of the Library can severely affect quickness. That's one reason many of us use multiple Libraries

The funniest idea to solve this mess is always to split your library - and then what... reassign the names manually to 50000 photos?

I'm not sure why the idea is funny. I have a Library of Wife's Old Family Pictures that I've pretty much finished editing, and which doesn't change much. I have another with My Old Family Pictures, and it, too, doesn't change much-- and since the pictures are from before our marriage, the libraries don't have many faces in common. I have a Library connected with work-- it also has a rather different cast. I have an iPictures Library where I put all the pictures from my iPhone and iPad. And I have a Favorites Library that has, well, my favorite pictures from all the other more archival type libraries, and it has some people from the other libraries that show up a lot.

When I decided to split my growing Library into pieces, I didn't re-name anyone. I started with a copy of the main Library and removed pictures that didn't belong, leaving the remaining ones with their already identified faces. Using Smart Albums made it pretty easy to remove the non-relevant pictures. So I need to tend faces only for the Libraries that change like my Favorites Library (which gets new iPhone and iPad pictures.)

You didn't mention how your external drive is formatted. I'm guessing it's OK, but we should say that for Photos, an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted. The newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open, since there is a chance of damaging the Photos database. See this:

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

217,376 points

Apr 16, 2024 10:54 AM in response to Wolfgang Gaebler

I've now ordered a Mac Mini with 2 TB internal SSD. If this won't fix the problem, I will sell all my Apple devices.

Buying a new Mac isn't going to solve the problem. The problem is not hardware related but a software issue. Are all of your photos in the HEIC format in the library? What format are the photos in the library, HEIC, JPEG, RAW, PNG, GIF or a combination of them?

Have you tried holding down the Option key, launching Photos and creating a new library? Then import some of the same photos and test to see if the same problem persists. If that works close the test library and open your original library and try again.

Have you installed and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac?

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Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

217,376 points

Apr 16, 2024 11:00 AM in response to Old Toad

I forgot to add: download and run Etrecheck.

Copy the report

and use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine the cause of the problem.

Addendum: how many photos are in the library?

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Answer 4

Apr 16, 2024 11:06 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

Richard.Taylor - Thanks for your answer, but unfortunately it won't help me. I do not have the time to manage different libraries more or less manually. I also think Apple should show a warning if it's not feasible to use a huge Photos library.

In my case it would take weeks to separate some of my photo memories and put them in different libraries. I just can't do that. Yes, my SSD is in APFS format - and it's so fast. If Apple would do its job, it should work IMHO.

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Answer 5

Apr 16, 2024 11:16 AM in response to Old Toad

Old Toad - I still hope that the internal SSD with 2TB will do the job. I understand that it might be software related but I have to try it. Yes, I have all different kind of formats since I'm using Photos (iPhoto) since a very long time.

I created a new library from scratch. I repaired another one. It all works as long as the library is small but nobody knows where the limit is - and Apple should either limit the size or let the user know where the problems could begin.

My last try was a brand new Mac Studio with nothing on it - and I've recreated the library from iCloud. If that doesn't work, what will? Okay, the internal drive was too small and I had to use the "Optimize Mac Storage" - which is a regular iCloud setting. I did not use any optimization tools. There's no VPN on this Mac and no virus scanner. It's really super fast and has enough memory but can't handle my Photos library...

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Answer 6

Apr 16, 2024 11:19 AM in response to Old Toad

Old Toad Thanks for the tip! I will try Etrecheck, but not today. Not enough time.

There are around 100 000 photos including videos in my library. In the past it was even more...

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Photos isn't working!

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