Photos search for categories (e.g. "Dog") does not work anymore

Question

JvdL Author

Level 1

18 points

Photos search for categories (e.g. "Dog") does not work anymore

Hi, in the past searching for picture content was working beautifully in Photos.

After updating to High Sierra this is not working correctly anymore.

I have about 75,000 photos and searching for "Dog" found a lot of pictures.

With High Sierra this search return only 8 pictures.

On the iphone, it still works correctly with the same picture (icloud photo library)

I already deleted the photolibrary on the mac and complete resynced from cloud including on week of permanent search index rebuilding.

Still nothing, only a few pictures are found.

What to do next?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Mar 5, 2018 6:37 AM

Reply

Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

Mar 5, 2018 10:45 AM in response to léonie

The category "dog" is creating many false positives, at least in my Photos Library. You may want to test with a differnet category - elephant, bear, bird, sunset. Those are giving much better results in my library.

Searching for dogs - many false positives: cats, a polar bear, a hippo, a baboon, a shadow, a calf, an impala.

Reply

Answer 2

JvdL Author

Level 1

18 points

Mar 5, 2018 8:36 AM in response to LarryHN

No, the scanning is finished, the corresponding service was running for about 10 days 24h a day.

This is done, but the results are not visible.

I think that there is a problem with bigger libraries, because i tested another library with just about 100 photos and there ist was working.

All this changed with High Sierra, that is unfortunately a total nightmare.

Everything is slower on my MBPR 2012.

Scrolling is slower, Apps are slower, the system starts slower, it takes longer to wake up from sleep, it doesn't sleep when it should, ...

Reply

Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

Mar 5, 2018 10:07 AM in response to JvdL

No, the scanning is finished, the corresponding service was running for about 10 days 24h a day.

This is done, but the results are not visible.

How do you know that? There is no indication Photos, if the scan for categories has finished, only for the faces.

For my library, with 50000 photos, it took nearly three weeks until the categories where showing again.

For one MacBookPro, the categories were awol even after three weeks. In this Mac I run a library repair, and then the categories would finally show again. But the repair resulted in a new upload of the library to iCloud, so it has been an expensive fix.

Reply

Answer 4

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Mar 5, 2018 10:23 AM in response to JvdL

Nothing there says that the background is complete - if fact it pretty much indicates that it is not complete - mine took several weeks maybe over a month and I only have about 25,000 photos - 75,000 is not likely to be done yet and again the best answer is to be patient - it is a virtue you know!

LN

Reply

Answer 5

JvdL Author

Level 1

18 points

Mar 5, 2018 1:12 PM in response to léonie

No, the same pictures give the same results on different devices with the same algorithm.

This was ok for a long time but after the High Sierra update it was broken.

This is valid for ever other category like „bird“ „beach“ „car“ and others.

Two iPhones, one iPad are working correctly, the Mac fails.

Reply

Answer 6

JvdL Author

Level 1

18 points

Mar 5, 2018 1:18 PM in response to LarryHN

It’s quite easy to see.

The processes are visible in the activity monitor.

They take about 100% processing power.

When the detection is done, there is no longer any CPU intensive task running.

Whenever you add some photos, these processes like “photoanalysisd” kick in and analyze these new pictures and stop after some time.

The photos app itself does not show the state, that is right, but the activity monitor helps.

Reply

Answer 7

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

Mar 5, 2018 11:46 PM in response to JvdL

When the detection is done, there is no longer any CPU intensive task running.

The same will be true, if the detection just paused for some reason, for example, because the library has a corruption or the photos need downloading from iCloud. That is what I meant - you cannot tell, if the recognition has finished successfully or just got stuck.

Is your iCloud Photos Library using "Optimize Storage"?

Reply

Answer 8

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Mar 5, 2018 7:34 AM in response to JvdL

be patient - High Sierra had a new face/object ID algorithm and rescans the library which takes a long time

LN

Reply

Photos search for categories (e.g. "Dog") does not work anymore

Similar questions