ArthurCAK
Level 1 (4 points)
Photos for Mac

Q: face scanning stalled on macOS Photos

After the initial upgrade to macOS the face scanning did start, but after a couple of start/stop sessions it refuses to finish working through the backlog.  Reboots, relaunching the application, etc., nothing works.  Anyone know how to kickstart this thing?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Oct 7, 2016 3:54 PM

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ArthurCAK

Q: face scanning stalled on macOS Photos

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  • Helpful answers

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Oct 7, 2016 3:58 PM in response to ArthurCAK
    Level 10 (85,678 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 7, 2016 3:58 PM in response to ArthurCAK

    Generally patience and quit messing with it - you can not speed it up but you can slow it down and even cause it to sto and or restart - leave yoru Mac powered, keep it awake, leave Photos not running and let it go - don't check the pregress more than once a day and if it hasn't moved give it another day - mine just finished 20,000 photos today (upgraded to Sierra day one) and it sometimes went days with no appearent additional scans but if left alone it did progress adn finished

     

    LN

  • by angry_deacon,Helpful

    angry_deacon angry_deacon Oct 14, 2016 2:28 PM in response to ArthurCAK
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Oct 14, 2016 2:28 PM in response to ArthurCAK

    Screen Shot 2016-10-14 at 11.18.12 AM.png

     

    you need to open "Activity Monitor" - "Go", "Utilities", "Activity Monitor"

    then quit the photos app

    in the activity monitor window, you need to forced quit "Photos Agents"

    then "Photoanalysisd" will appear and start working. that's what scan faces

  • by ArthurCAK,

    ArthurCAK ArthurCAK Oct 14, 2016 2:21 PM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 14, 2016 2:21 PM in response to LarryHN

    It's now been on the order of a couple of weeks, with a few hard boots in between, and still no progress.  And my archive is much, much smaller than yours. ;-)

  • by ArthurCAK,

    ArthurCAK ArthurCAK Oct 14, 2016 2:25 PM in response to angry_deacon
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 14, 2016 2:25 PM in response to angry_deacon

    I appreciate the tip.  When I force quit the agent another one is spawned immediately (shows with a new PID), so I don't know if the agent is still interfering.  Methinks I might have to go after the parent process as well.  Time to troll the process listing.  Thanks for the pointer.

  • by ArthurCAK,

    ArthurCAK ArthurCAK Oct 14, 2016 2:28 PM in response to ArthurCAK
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 14, 2016 2:28 PM in response to ArthurCAK

    That's odd, the agent process is literally called cloudphotosd, but I never used iCloud for photos.  I have to wonder if it's wedged somehow because it thinks I should be using cloud...