Photos faces not working properly.

This is an old thread, but the first to appear in Google for searches around Photos not automatically scanning photos (incl. People) so want to update with the solution Apple Engineering worked on with me. Here are the steps they provided that fixed everything on two of my Macs.

• Shut the Mac down completely. Restart the Mac holding down SHIFT.
  • This will boot the Mac into Safe Mode and resets / deletes / kernel cache / other system cache files (which apparently includes some caches for the photoanalysisd and photolibraryd you see in Activity Monitor).
  • This also prevents photoanalysisd an and photolibraryd from loading during the next step (which we need to guarantee).
• Go to the Photos application. Click SHIFT and then double click on the Photos application. This apparently opens Photos in a special Safe Mode as well and clears the application caches.
  • COMMAND + Q the application and verify that the application did not crash on closure. If it did, repeat the above step again until it does not crash on closure.
  • If Photos will not close on COMMAND + Q you must repair your Photos Library.

    Use the Photos library repair tool - Apple Support

  • Try COMMAND + Q again and confirm no crash on closure.
• Open Terminal and type:
  • diskutil resetUserPermissions / ‘id -u’
  • Wait for the command to run. You will receive a confirmation by seeing “User permissions have been reset”
  • This will reset the permissions to the Photos Library AND all photos within the Photos Library Package Container that stores all your photos.
• Restart the Mac.
• Open the Photos application and allow it five minutes to reset everything that was cleared in Safe Mode (should only need 30 seconds but run it for five minutes to be safe). This kicks off the scheduler for the photo analysis process. COMMAND + Q Photos.
• Go to System Preferences and tell your computer not to sleep for the next 24 hours. Walk away from the machine and let it run.

and when I try to add a face the circle will not move from the center of the photo.

If that happens and you cannot adjust the faces circle, restart Photos.

Sometimes you have to restart the Mac as well.

You're welcome 🙂

I'm astonished that you are still having this problem on macOS Sierra 10.12.2. I had this problem frequently with Photos on Yosemite and El Capitan with the old Faces feature, but did not see it any longer after the 10.12.2 update of Sierra. So it looks like it is still not fixed.

Thank you for this update, Nicolaus.

I have not seen this advice in any of Apple's support documents for Photos: "Go to the Photos application. Click SHIFT and then double click on the Photos application. This apparently opens Photos in a special Safe Mode as well and clears the application caches."

That is really good to know.