scanning takes forever

I have three problems with this:

1. There's no explanation as to why this process is taking place.

2. There's no estimate on how long it will take.

3. Based on my estimate, it could take months.

There is a bit of an explanation in the Sierra preview: http://www.apple.com/macos/sierra/

Now Photos can turn them into unforgettable experiences called Memories. And powerful new technologies deliver improved face recognition, display all your photos on a world map, and even allow you to search your photos by the objects and scenery in them.

Face recognition needs a lot of processing power, and even more so the scan of your photos for content. Photos is analyzing your photos and tries to classify the objects in them, and assigns categories to the photos, based on the content. You can now search your library for photos of certain categories - try to search for dogs beach, birds, beer, mountains, birthday cake, combat ship, etc. Photos will know what is in your photos without you having to assign titles or keywords. I found the results impressive. There were a few false targets, for example a picture of a cat classified as a dog, or the pyramids of Gizeh classified as mountains, but most of the photos were labeled correctly.

This scan needs plenty of processing time. You cannot disable it, because all the new Sierra Photos features need the people and the categories, the people albums and the Memories.

For me, the most annoying thing about this huge amount of preprocessing us, that the results do not seem to sync between my Macs. It has to be done on all Macs independently.

The updated Photos Help says: https://help.apple.com/photos/mac/1.2/?lang=en#/phtf5e48489c

Note: People identified in the People album are not synced across devices.

So I have to name all people again , over and over on four Macs.

For me, the most annoying thing about this huge amount of preprocessing us, that the results do not seem to sync between my Macs. It has to be done on all Macs independently.

The updated Photos Help says: https://help.apple.com/photos/mac/1.2/?lang=en#/phtf5e48489c

Note: People identified in the People album are not synced across devices.

So I have to name all people again , over and over on four Macs.

Darn - I have not seen that and was hoping that it would not be and when al scanning and uploading was done (someday who knows when) things would be in sync - Oh Well

Time to leave APple feedback -- http://www.apple.com/feedback/

LN

Me too. I love Photos but face detection is not something I WANT. Now here I am with my iMac scanning night and day. 26,000 scanned and 160,000 to go 😟

I will accept that in the end, I have more options in organizing my work. BUT!!!! My MacBook Pro is running hot enough to burn me and the battery is draining quick!

All my photos are on Thunderbolt external hard drives and I hope this won't take more than a week :/ What about folks using slow hard drives? That really isn't doable. What stress is being applied to these hard drives with the excess heat to scan and then full time connection once scanned?????

Yes it is slow and it is explained - it only happens when the photos app is not running and your Mac is connected to power - since it is impossible to predict your behavior it is impossiblet o predict times - therre is a lot going on in the people scan and it will take a while - my MBA is about half way done with 20,000 photos after a day - I just upgraded my iMac this morning and have not looked at its progress yet - my iPad took several days as did my iPhone

In any case it is what it is and you can not control or change it - all you can do is keep the computer connected to power, turned on and Photos not running and it will be done when it is done

and everyone here are users no different than yourself - if you want to express your opinion then tell Apple what you want - http://www.apple.com/feedback/

LN