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JimR123 Author

Level 1

50 points

Why is people scanning in MacOS Photos so slow?

I have around 50,000 photos in my iCloud Photo Library, and all my devices (iPad Pro 9.7, iPhone 6S Plus, and MacBook Pro) use optimise storage so that it doesn't keep all of the photos on any of my devices.

When I upgraded my iPad and iPhone to iOS 10, it only took a couple of days for it to scan all my photos for people. But my MacBook Pro on MacOS Sierra seems to be taking forever. I upgraded my MacBook to Sierra on the first day (20th September) and 9 days later it's managed to scan only 21,000 of those 50,000 photos. It is still moving along, just very very slowly.

It gets left plugged in for most of the day. I'd say it gets about 18 hours per day "quiet time" where it's plugged in and able to do its scanning. My iPhone only had about 6 hours scanning time per day, so that only took about 12-18 hours to scan the whole lot.

It's a MacBook Pro Retina (with standard SSD), which I've yet to see any other slow down with, so it doesn't seem like the MacBook is slow in comparison to the iPad and iPhone.

Am I missing something?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), macOS Sierra (10.12), Photos

Posted on Sep 29, 2016 8:34 AM

19 replies

LarryHN

Level 10

106,124 points

Oct 5, 2016 6:54 AM in response to Frantumn

I have about 20,000 photos and I upgraded to Sierra day one -my MBA is powered and awake most of the time with Photos not running - I generally reboot every three o four days - I am down to about 400 to go so should finish soon - best plan is to let it go as you can not speed it up but messing around can slow it down -- on my iMac which has all the originals it only took about two days

Oct 5, 2016 7:59 AM in response to léonie

Yes I have videos, yes I know it slows the process down but think about it. When I posted this it had been 3 days with no progress; should one think it reasonable that it could take that long to scan a single video? Anyways, I'm now on day 7 with no further progress on the scan. I've given up at this point and can only hope a fix is coming soon.

Oct 5, 2016 12:53 PM in response to JimR123

So it's advisable to let Photos be opened, minimised or closed? 😐 I have noticed that faces scanning on macOS is slow or let's say stops at some point...

léonie

Level 10

197,303 points

Apr 12, 2017 6:32 AM in response to wealthychef

Did you keep the old library as a backup, since you will have lost the ability to revert the edits to the original versions? Your fix is certainly working, but it is breaking the lossless workflow.

Why is people scanning in MacOS Photos so slow?