Once I use Retouch, Photos can't duplicate or airdrop the photo. I'm using Tahoe 26.3 which is up to date. Is anyone else having this problem? I'm using a 2024 imac with M4. I've tried restarting the computer but no change.
Michael
iMac 24″, macOS 26.3
It definitely works for me, also in 26.3.
Do you use iCloud Photos? Have you turned on Optimize?
What is your storage on this Mac? At System Settings>General> Storage, my Mac says 745 GB of 1TBB used. What does yours say? Is your free storage on your Mac less than 10%?
To narrow things down, try these steps:
Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support
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.
It definitely works for me, also in 26.3.
Do you use iCloud Photos? Have you turned on Optimize?
What is your storage on this Mac? At System Settings>General> Storage, my Mac says 745 GB of 1TBB used. What does yours say? Is your free storage on your Mac less than 10%?
To narrow things down, try these steps:
Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support
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.
Wpfbki10 wrote: … So clearly it's in the external drive setup.
I'm not sure that's so clear to me. If you haven't booted into Safe Mode, you should try that. You should try creating a new Library on your external drive. You should also try an alternate user account.
How is your external drive formatted? To avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. The drive must be connected directly to the Mac by cable, not networked, clouded, NASed, etc. Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted. There have been so many problems with using incompatible drives that Tahoe shouldn't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open, but this may not be your problem--but it's worth a warning! See this:
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
If this drive is in a an incompatible format, stop running Photos with it immediately! A Photos Library can sit on an incompatible drive, but running it may corrupt the database.
Running a Library from a properly formatted drive should work just fine.
new cables
Cable can certainly cause problems, as well as dirty ports. Changing cables is easy.
Do you have suggestions? I can't really afford unlimited iCloud storage since I'm on a bit of a budget.
I keep Libraries on external drives, but I keep my main Favorites Library, my System Library, on my internal drive. Macs allow us to have multiple Libraries-- we just double click on the one we want to use, or we use the Library Chooser. One advantage is that I can have a $3/month iCloud account and use it to synchronize my Favorite pictures with my iPad and iPhone. The Favorites Library has the pictures I like to see most often and that I want to share with friends and family. A smaller Library is also a bit faster and easier to organize.
Try those other diagnostics to see if it's really the external drive, and let us know…
If you external drive is properly formatted for a Photos library try opening the library with the Option+Connamd keys held down in order to repair/restore the library on the external drive.
I don't know what I did that made it start working properly but it is now performing as it should. I want to stress how thankful I am for your thoughtful responses and advice. I did check on the format and it is in APFS. I formatted one of my external drives in something else once so that it would in theory also work with windows but I found out very quickly that that was very unstable.
Your ideas and thinking process helps me in my troubleshooting processes also. I rebooted the computer a couple of times and removed the external drive (unplugged it) and at some point it just started working. I don't like when I don't find a smoking gun but it's working and I'll take it. I think it would be worth my while to order a few new cables but finding quality cables online is nearly impossible. Do you recomend a brand for USB Type C cables?
Thank you again.
Michael
First of all, thank you very much for putting so much thought and detail into your response. Without getting into too much detail your thoughts gave me something to work with. So you know how I'm storing my photos and videos, I'll give you a quick run down. I'm semi retired and one of my hobbies is photography. Okay, maybe an obsession. But I don't store them in icloud nor do I store them on my computer. Just too much. I use external hard drives and they are large. 8TB. I use one as my primary and another as a backup/clone.
Going with your line of thought, I ejected the external drive, plugged my iphone into the computer and created a new photos library on my computer. The retouch feature worked fine. So clearly it's in the external drive setup. I don't know if new cables will improve the situation or if I just have to start using smaller drives and just work things out by maybe just keeping them coordinated by year. The external drives show 5.4 T used and 2.6 T available.
Do you have suggestions? I can't really afford unlimited iCloud storage since I'm on a bit of a budget.
I'm tempted. And yes, it is formated in APFS. But I read online that repairing my photos library could take several days. That's going to be a last ditch effort. I have 5.24 TB of photos and videos. The external drive is SSD but it's still going to take a long time and I worry about power outages when we are talking that much time.
Wpfbki10 wrote: I don't know what I did that made it start working properly but it is now performing as it should…
Re-booting, and especially rebooting in Safe Mode, clears out lots of garbage, and it brings a breath of fresh air to the computer. I don't do it very often, but with slow-downs and crazy stuff, it's the easies thing to try with the greatest chance of helping.
Do you recomend a brand for USB Type C cables?
Well, you can't go wrong with Apple cables-- not cheap, though! $29 for a 3 foot cable! Still, you pay for quality.
Cable ads can be very misleading. Fast Charging is definitely not the same as fast data transfer. If you have fast SSDs, then you need fast data cables.
As an example, I just bought some 6ft Anker cables for charging, and they say
"High-Speed Data Transfer: Transfer files quickly with 480Mbps data transfer speeds"
but my SSDs are 1000 MB/s (well, I get 800MB/s from measurements,) so this 480 Mbps is maybe medium speed. (To be fair, "High Speed" is indeed the correct term, but it's high speed for older drives.) Also, the standard is that MB/s=8Mb/s-- the uppercase B is Bytes, and lower case b is bits, so I'm not totally sure what advertising blurbs mean. (The cables seem physically robust, the descriptions is accurate, and I want them for charging, so I'm OK. Most adds don't even give a data speed!)
If your SSD drive is fast, look for USB3.2 speed. I see cables at Amazon that say 20 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s (again with a small b,) at half Apple's price. But there are so many really cheaper, lower quality cables that it's hard to turn your eyes away from them!
Wpfbki10 wrote: …I read online that repairing my photos library could take several days.
That hasn't been the case for me. I have 17000 pictures.
It might take days to re-synchronize with iCloud if you use iCloud Photos.
iMac Photos: Can't duplicate/AirDrop after Retouch
