Face Names keep moving in Photos

When are you seeing the moving faces circles? while you are trying to add a circle around a face, or are older faces circles suddenly appearing somewhere else after you installed a system update?

Ever since upgrading to macOS 10.14 Mojave and later system upgrades I had occasionally named faces change the place in group photos or photos couples. This started with macOS 10.14. when Photos suddenly tried to be smart did no longer allow us to have two faces with the same name together in a photo. We suddenly could no longer name both a person and her mirror image in the same photo. It had also other consequences. if we had named a person in a photo previously and Photos had recognized this person in a different position it would remove the name we had already assigned from the correct face. When we tried to fix it by assigning the name back to the correct face it might result in merged people in the People album.

If you are seeing the names moving to a different face, you may want to check all albums of people who are in the same photo, if there are incorrectly assigned faces in the same album. If Photos has merged the albums of two people it needs to be corrected asap, or the error might propagate.

Throwergb wrote: … I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing these sorts of problems in Photos. On the other hand I'm sorry it's happening to you.

My point was that re-starting the Mac stabilized the face locations. How does that work for you? Have you tried re-starting 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 

What happens if you use another library? You can 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.

How about if you make a new user and see if the same problem recurs with it.  This is a bit harder, because a new user can't access a different user's stuff. You would need to temporarily move your Library out of your own user's Pictures folder up to the general "Users" folder. 

Could it be, that the photos, where the faces circles have moved, have been edited by cropping them?

After cropping a photo it can take a while, until the faces circles will move back to the correct position.

I just looked through my pictures, and all the circles seem to be in the right places. There was some really crazy behavior, though-- circles jumping around, opening "edit" when I typed, typing being interrupted, etc. Restarting Photos didn't help, but restarting the Mac cleared it up.

I've done a good bit of restarting Photos, lately…