Searching in Photos is TERRIBLE

Question

Level 1

16 points

Searching in Photos is TERRIBLE

My iPhone X has been "updating people" since 11/3 and there's only five people in the Album! Photos on my Mac OS 10.13.1 MacBookPro has all of the iPhoto people imported from my old album. I've imported that album to iOS 11.1.2 Photos (via iTunes 12.7.1.14) as well, but I can't search for people by name. I've spent hours and hours of time classifying people in iPhoto and Photos only to have all of that work completely destroyed by this new algorithm that doesn't work, and I still can't search!

Photos has been a mess for searching since it was released in my opinion. The iPhoto metadata was never imported in a meaningful way. For organizing a large photo library to be searched, Photos still can't do that in 2017. I can't find a picture of a person or a dog on my phone! Is there a third-party Photos app that actually works?

Posted on Nov 17, 2017 1:37 PM

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Answer 1

hoyhoy Author

Level 1

16 points

Nov 17, 2017 1:39 PM in response to hoyhoy

Also, I reclassified most people in iOS 10 outside (which was totally separate from the Photos/iPhoto people classification). And that separate metadata seems totally gone now. Is there a way to reinstate the original iOS 10 People data?

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

194,755 points

Nov 18, 2017 12:47 PM in response to hoyhoy

Consider to use iCloud Photo Library to sync your photos from the Mac to the iPhone. This will sync the people you named on the Mac to the iPhone and create named People albums in Photos on the iPhone as well.

If you sync with iTunes, the drawback is, that the iTunes synced photos will not be stored in the camera roll on the iPhone, but handled separately, and every time you sync again, all photos will be replaced by the newly synced photos. All work you invest into naming photos on the iPhone or adding albums will be lost.

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Answer 3

hoyhoy Author

Level 1

16 points

Nov 18, 2017 1:14 PM in response to léonie

That’s madness... Photos can’t search for people that are imported from iTunes via Photos on Mac? I can’t even seem to add people on iOS 11.1 from the iTunes imported photos whereas this was possible on iOS 10...

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

194,755 points

Nov 18, 2017 2:40 PM in response to hoyhoy

I can’t even seem to add people on iOS 11.1 from the iTunes imported photos whereas this was possible on iOS 10...

You would have to save the iTunes synced photos to the camera roll, so they will be added to the Photos library properly. iTunes sync is meant for the older devices that do not support iOS 11 and iCloud Photo Library. I stopped using iTunes sync for my iPhone after iOs 10 came out. I liked iTunes sync previously better than iCloud Photo Library, because it could sync smart albums and synced the faces albums, keywords, and searching was easy.

But now, that iCloud Photo Library can finally sync the people albums, I prefer iCloud Photo Library syncing to the iTunes syncing on iOS 11.

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