Photos keeps crashing and restoring...something nefarious happening?

Time Machine can't be on the same volume and anything else. The Library cannot be on a Networked drive.

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

The above says:

Prepare your storage device

Make sure that your external storage device, such as a USB drive or Thunderbolt drive, is formatted for Mac: either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

You can't store your library on a storage device used for Time Machine backups. And to avoid possible data loss, don't store your library on a removable storage device like an SD card or USB flash drive, or on a device shared over your network or the internet, including over a cloud-based storage service.

Library on networked external drive, too big for laptop (280 GB)… maybe too many photos… now splicing them into smaller chunks.

That's your problem right there. The Library cannot be on a networked location. It can be on an external drive directly attached to the computer but not on a NAS. Hopefully, the damage to the library will not be too great. Move it to a drive formatted Mac OS X Extended, Journaled or apfs.

Like how you are so trusting… hard to prove negative but not impossible.

Like I say, who would want pics of your Aunt Gladys...?

If this isn't caused by alien drones, then you should try these things:

That's weird. To narrow things down, try these steps:

• Restart the computer (of course)
• Re-start in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes, and it often helps. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this: 

           Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support 

Those are the easiest things to try first. Then try these:

• Use another library if you have one, or make a small test Library with a few pictures in it and see if the same thing happens. You can create a new Library by closing Photos and then option-clicking on the Photos icon.
• Make a new user and see if the same problem recurs with it
• Rebuild your Photos Library--close Photos and re-launch by option-command-clicking the app icon.

The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.

Let us know what happens…

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

Is your Photos library on and external drive? If so how is it formatted? If not where is it located in your user account?

Get the library off the network drive and put it in your Pictures folder or on an external SSD formatted APFS and connected directly to your MBA.

Is it the library crashing? Or the application?

Why is Photos so "buggy" rendering it totally unusable???

It's not. Most people use it with no issues. It would be more profitable for you to investigate what local problem is causing the issue. Can't help much from here are you don't even mention what version of Photos and the OS. you have.

Is someone or Apple harvesting the photos secretly by downloading photos from the Photos library to some unknown place to be used for other purposes?

And why would "someone or Apple" want photographs of your Aunt Gladys? Really? Of course we can't know that it's not happening because you cannot prove a negative. But if this is a real concern for you then I strongly urge you to get rid of any electronic devices you own, urgently.

You might try using this portable external SSD from OWC (MacSales.com):

It ranges from $50 for 250 GB to $149 for 1 TB. 2 TB is available if you think you need that much. But 1 TB should be sufficient. It is designed for maximum portability.

Glad you liked that, OT. I think it's especially cool that these mysterious drones are sneaking around New Jersey, snooping on folks for nefarious purposes, and they're doing it with all their lights on! Clever of them. When I go snooping, I like to have a siren blaring…

A talking head on one of the cable news shows said that since they all had lights on they were earth originated and were following FCC rules. Also if it were aliens they'd be invisible. Duh!

These politicians just want something to complain about to so the voters they're doing something.

Richard.Taylor wrote:

• If this isn't caused by alien drones, then you should try these things: