Photos ? A total mess

When trying this procedure, all I get is a Scroll down menu which allows to open, copy etc but does not give access to the structure of the folders

Odysseus left out a step. It should read:

• Quit "Photos"
• Back up your Photos Library
• Control Click on your Photos library
• Select "Show Package Contents" from the contextual menu.
• Delete the folder located at <library_bundle>/resources/recovery
• Close the Photos Library bundle and double-click it to launch Photos
• A new recovery folder will be created

On a practical aspect: if you don't use Albums because of the lack of reliability (which I fully understand), how can you find the pictures you are looking for ? Do you have another filing method ? (or just using the Events names)

In Aperture I used folders and projects to structure the library according to the purpose of the photos (lectures, research, expeditions, family photos, travels, vacations) and according to the date and place. Date and place is taken care of in Photos by the moments and places albums. So I just need to create the albums for the other types. And for that I am using keywords. The keywords are syncing reliably to all devices, even my iPad and iPhone, and it is easy to recreate the corresponding smart albums on my other Macs, when I need them.

For example, to be able to find the photos from a particular photo shooting trip quickly, I create a smart album using the keyword "2013_SomeEvent". My list of keywords is rather long, however. I miss the hierarchical keywords of Aperture. So I have to take care to follow a strict pattern for the names of the keywords to be able to remember them and find them in the list.

The keywords make it possible to have a dynamic list of albums and folders. I create smart albums, when I need them, delete the ones, that I currently do not need, because too many smart albums are making Photos slow, and I do not mind too much, when they vanish on their own.

I also add keywords for the names of the people. This serves a triple purpose:

1. The name keywords sync between the devices, while the People albums do not. This makes it easier to recreate the people albums on my other Macs. And the name keywords will be saved, when I export the photos.
2. And I can see the full names of the people in the Info panel and not just the tiny, barely recognizable thumbnail with the face. The thumbnails in the Info panel are a joke. They tell us nothing that we cannot already see in the photo in the first place.
3. And I can see the full names of the people, even when Photos is abbreviating the the names to the first name in the People album. Photos's tendency to abbreviate the full names to first names makes it impossible to use the People album to remember the names of people we meet. I like to use the faces feature to have a record of the names and faces of the students in our projects, and it does not help at all, when Photos is only showing the first name. And it is embarrassing, if we are not on a first-name basis with the person in question.

Gerald Lechault wrote:

Forgot to answer one of your questions: no, pictures which should be in an album do not show when doing a search, but I can find them manually.

I re-linked afew hundred pictures manually to the existing albums, using my Mac Book, and after a few minutes, they get updated on the Mac Book Air too, but not on my iMac.

As to the missing albums - you could backup your library and try Odysseus's solution here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7716281?answerId=30978893022#30978893022

Well, I've found a solution to the problem where a rebuild causes photos to appear to disappear after a rebuild. Here are the steps.

1. Quit "Photos"
2. Back up your Photos Library
3. Control Click on your Photos library and delete the folder located at <library_bundle>/resources/recovery
4. Close the Photos Library bundle and double-click it to launch Photos
5. A new recovery folder will be created

Yes and have had since it came out - no problems

and all of my Macs in two states and all IOS devices have identical libraries thanks ti iCloud Photo Library

So the problem is your set up and your operation - mine and millions of other are just fine

If you want help try posting a rational request with no editorials and no cursing and spent that time providing detailed information - Photos works great and help is readily available but first you have to do your part

read this Writing an effective Apple Support Communities question

LN

Photos cannot be reinstalled as it is part of the OS, right ?

You can reinstall Photos by reinstalling the OS. The Photos.app is just a wrapper with calls to system services. That is why the application is so amazingly small, lee than 60 MB, just the size of a large RAW file.

reinstalling Photos can help, if the problem is system wide and nt just happens for your current library or only in your own user account.

In an older discussion, I found a suggestion to delete the content of User/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos and then restart the computer and relaunch Photos. Do you think that this is something that I should try ?

This will help, if corrupted plists in your User/Library are causing the problems. To test this, launch Photos from a different user account (see this help page: Isolating an issue by using another user account). If Photos is working perfectly when launched from the Guest User account, the problem is restricted to your current account and trashing plist files or caches, or containers can help, unless your current library is causing the problem. Test with a new test library as well.

Strangely, I cannot see the Containers folder in the Library, but will do some cleaning anyway as it is now clear that the problem is restricted to my account.

Are you looking in the Library folder in your Home folder, not in the Library folder at the top level of the System drive?

Your user library may still be hidden.

To reveal the hidden User Library:

• Bring the Finder forward by clicking on the Desktop or the Finder icon in the Dock.
• Select your user/home folder (with the house icon in the Finder sidebar)
• With that Finder window as the front window, press the key combination ⌘J to bring up the View options.
• In the View options panel enable ’Show Library Folder’. That will make your user library folder visible in your Home folder, if it is still hidden.
• Open your Home folder, then the Library folder, then Containers and com.apple.Photos.

Which leads me to this idea, so please tell me if it makes sense or would make things even worse: why not copy my Mac Book Air Photo library to my iMac Pictures folder and erase the one currently being used ? That way I would at least have the same content on all 3 computers. Is there anything against it ?

If you start over with a copy of your MacBook Air Library and your iMac and enable this library as your iCloud Photo Library, the copied library will start to upload to iCloud Photo Library all over again. It a library corruption has been the problem, this second time good go better, but if the problem lies somewhere else on your system, it would not help.

iMac 2009, running Sierra 10.12.2, 259GB available, 4GB memory

The 4GB memory might be the bottleneck why the iMac is slow on Sierra. Can the memory of your iMac be upgraded to 8GB, like on your other Macs?

Is Photos faster, if you restart the Mac, without any other applications running, that also need much RAM? Check in the Activity Monitor.app (in Applications > Utilities) how much RAM is used by the different processes.

If the photoanalysisd is using all CPU time and Memory, the problem may be only temporary, because the macOS 10.12. upgrade is causing a heavy background processing to classify your photos according to categories and a new faces scan. This will be over, once the library has been scanned, but may need a few weeks to get done.Keep the Mac running, when you are not using it.

Why are you enabling My Photo Stream in addition to iCloud Photo Library?

Do you have devices without iCloud Photo Library?

iCloud Photo Library has been working better for me, after I disabled My Photo Stream.

Do you think that I should uncheck My Photo Stream on my 3 computers ?

For me it is working better on my Macs, after I disabled My Photo Stream. The "My Photo Stream" from my iPad is still transferring the photos to my Macs, even with My Photo Stream off on the Macs and only enabled on the iPad.

You could give it a try.