With Tahoe the 'Finding People' with photos app no longer works

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Level 1

10 points

With Tahoe the 'Finding People' with photos app no longer works

I have a Mac mini and after many hours of setting it up early last fall with a very large photo library database, I got everything working and all faces identified and everything working GREAT. After the Tahoe upgrade it appears that it ALWAYS says 'Finding People' on my Mac mini and all my iPhones. Apple has agreed there is an issue, but no time frame of when it will be fixed. Was wondering if it is a better solution to go back to Sequoia? I do weekly TimeMachine backups and know when Tahoe was installed. I only had programs on the Mac mini internal drive and keep all of my data on external drives. It is very frustrating that after a couple months of working with the Apple photos app experts and getting my 1.7 TB photos library working that it has gotten screwed up by the Tahoe upgrade. I can still see the roughly 40 people I identified, but ALL of the other roughly 90-100 named people that I moved to 'Hide This Person' are no longer accessible as they are only visible when the 'Finding People' task is done. It has been since January and the task never finishes and previously with Sequoia it had. And if you look, you'll see that the same thing is true on iPhones. And all of my household iPhones exhibit the same issues with much smaller PhotosLibrary's.

Mac mini, macOS 26.2

Posted on Feb 28, 2026 10:10 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

203,517 points

Mar 1, 2026 2:02 AM in response to arysrus

You may want to split your Photos Library in smaller libraries. Such as large library as you are using ( 1.7 TB ) is needing a lot of processing power, whenever you install major system upgrade. even my moderately sizes library with just 467.59 GB needed more than a month to be scanned again after the upgrade to Tahoe.

What I did, when I noticed that my library has became hard to maintain has been to create separate libraries for each year and each major photo shooting session, archived on external drives. In my main iCloud Photos library I am only keeping my favorite photos from all years, plus the most recent new photos, that still need editing and weeding out. These Photos I want to be able to see on all my devices, so the library needs to be small enough to fit onto my iPhone and iPad. It keeps growing however, but I try to keep to size below 50000 items. With a small library it is easier to find photos on the devices with a tiny display, smart albums are more responsive, and the new scanning after a system upgrade is faster.

I rarely need to access the archived yearly libraries, because the favorites are all in my main library.

In the very early versions of Photos a large library size has not been a problem after a system upgrade. It started, when Apple introduced Artificial Intelligence into Photos and Photos needs to analyze and recognize what a photo is showing to be able to classify the photos according to categories and scenes, and has to do it over and over again for the complete library, whenever a system upgrade changes and improves the algorithm.

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Answer 2

Mar 1, 2026 7:08 AM in response to iPhoton

iPhoton wrote: …Photos is either very inefficient at finding people or we underestimate the problem. …

I think we overestimate the potential value.

Photos' face ID will never help with backs of heads, poor lighting, and so on. So in spite of the People albums, I must go through all my pictures to find the ones with "Aunt Ethel" in them where she's behind someone else, looking the other way, or whatever. Many of us with Macs depend on keywords and Smart Albums to keep track of people, and those survive all system upgrades. The People albums help with assigning keywords, and the little face tags are handy in group Photos, even if we add them ourselves.

If that's a new idea, see this:

Saving Face Names for Genealogy

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Answer 3

arysrus Author

Level 1

10 points

Mar 1, 2026 5:18 AM in response to léonie

Thanks for the response, but I believe at this point that the photo's app is broken. I went through painstakingly long processes when I first tried to import my large photo library. I was on the phone with Apple support for over an hour 3-4 different times to where we together finally learned something. With Sequoia, we found that I had to import my photo's in chunks at at time and then let the photo's app find all the people and then import more versus just importing all 1.7 TB at a time. I don't think even the Apple people that I talked to understood this as they had me reinstall the photo's app and one time reinstalled my total operating system before we figured out this was the way to get it all imported and identify faces. That being said, it all WAS working under Sequoia and it would find all new faces and give me the option to 'Hide this person' which I did for about 90-100 people and only kept the 48 people I wanted to see all the time. Everything was working fine, but now with Tahoe it NEVER stops saying 'Finding People' and so you can never get back the 'Hidden' faces and the task never completes. It's been 2 months. And if you go look at your iPhone, if you have one, you'll notice that it says 'Finding People' also, all the time. I've checked friends iPhone's also and it is the same with everyone. Most people won't notice it as they already had their friends faces identified, but if any new face were to want to be added, I bet that it won't work as you can't add faces/people until the 'Finding People' is done or puts up new faces to name, which at this time I don't believe will ever happen. My iPhone, my wife's, my daughters and multiple friends phones all are doing the same thing.....saying 'Finding People', and it never finishes. Even the Apple support person I talked to a few weeks ago realized this as he checked his iPhone, his Mac, his Mac mini and noticed this issue. My big question is when will Apple fix this or will they ever fix it. He told me to just keep checking for updates, but I have to believe that until enough people recognize this and bring it to their attention, that maybe nothing will be done??? That is why I'm seriously considering going back to Sequoia, but don't know how difficult that will be.

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Answer 4

iPhoton

Level 4

2,008 points

Mar 1, 2026 5:47 AM in response to arysrus

Photos is either very inefficient at finding people or we underestimate the problem.

My 2017 iMac Pro "maximum configuration" with 3.5 TB of available 4 TB storage filled mostly with photo libraries eventually "gave up the ghost". A rebuild of my largest photo library would typically take a day or more so I would leave it to run overnight and hope by the next afternoon it would be done. I started getting error messages that the computer was overheating and should try later!

I eventually put it out of its misery, made a complete backup on an external hard drive and donated the iMac Pro. Am currently waiting for the Studio M5 Ultra announcement to start over. In the meantime I'm accessing the current (and much smaller) system library from my PowerBook and iPad as I add new photos from iPhone, but I have no access to my other (and larger) libraries.

If I could offer any advice ... step away and let it work! Select "People and Pets" and when it starts finding them switch to another application. Give it plenty of time ... days if need be and "don't peek" ... every time you select Photos the process gets interrupted if the app is active.

Thanks for your insight and advice on the cause of the problem, which will inform my decision on what computer to buy and how to manage my libraries.

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Answer 5

arysrus Author

Level 1

10 points

Mar 1, 2026 6:47 AM in response to iPhoton

I appreciate your advice, and I have 'stepped away' for a couple weeks and it never comes back since the Tahoe update. And like I said, you look at your iPhone, with a much smaller database of pictures you will notice it is in the same endless search mode of 'Finding People' as the computer. Apple broke the photo's app when going to Sequoia. It's just a matter of when and if they will fix it.

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With Tahoe the 'Finding People' with photos app no longer works

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