Photos App - not scanning for faces

Question

Level 1

11 points

Photos App - not scanning for faces

I have around 120GB of photos and my MacBook has only about 256GB of internal HDD space. So I moved all my photos on external 1TB SSD and then created a photos library on on the same SSD drive.

While creating the photo library, I also copied all photos and videos into the library. I unchecked all options of cloud photos as I do not have any iCloud storage (except for the 5GB free that apple offers).

Also, I have designated this library as the system photos library.

The issue I am facing is that Face recognition in this library has not even started for over one week now. I made sure that I met all the required conditions i.e. Mac is connected to power, external SSD connected to Mac and Photos App not in use (I tried it with the photos App minimised and also by completely quitting the app).. I also ensured that the Mac never slept during the last week by changing the default energy saver settings. Still no luck on face recognition - it still shows 0 out of 27,500 odd photos scanned.

I googled for solution and also, manually added face name for a couple of photos in the hope that the app will start adding more mics to the manually defined faces - --- but no luck.

Can someone please help. Thanks

MacBook

Posted on Nov 9, 2020 10:26 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

197,375 points

Nov 11, 2020 9:50 AM in response to Bavvy

Try to keep Photos running, but switch away to a different app, so Photos is in the background. Prevent the Energy Saver from kicking in and putting the ma cot sleep.

Is the library on your SSD your System Photos Library?

Can you tell how far the face recognition has preceded?

The status message below the People album is rarely updated. Even if you are seeing "zero photos scanned" there, Photos may already have processed many photos and videos.

Which system version is running on your Mac?

Have you enabled the option in the View menu "View > Show Faces names"? If not, try it. This way you can see faces circles around all detected faces.

If you are running macOS 10.15 Catalina, you can create a smart album with the rule "Person > is > "and leave the name field empty.

This smart album will show you all unnamed faces, that already have been detected. By looking at the last photo with a detected face you could try to find out, which the next photo should be, that has not been scanned.

Perhaps you have a video in your library, that is in an incompatible format. We really need to know which system is running on your Mac to be able to see which media are compatible with your version of Photos.

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Answer 2

Bavvy Author

Level 1

11 points

Nov 18, 2020 12:44 AM in response to léonie

Thanks a lot for your help. I followed all your advice and finally after 2-3 days of keeping my photos app offline (using Command Q option) I found that face recognition started on the MacOS journaled partition.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

197,375 points

Nov 10, 2020 4:38 AM in response to Bavvy

The formatting of the HDD is Ex-FAT.

As Tony said, this will not work. It suffices for single files and folders, but not for libraries. Instead of reformatting the volume, you could also create a second partition, MacOS extended (Journaled) on the external drive for your Photos Library. Then you can still use the Ex-FAT partition to share files with windows computers.

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Answer 4

Nov 9, 2020 11:19 PM in response to Bavvy

Hi

Did you correctly prepare the SSD as described in the linked article?

The external storage must be connected to your mac (not a network drive) and must be formatted APFS or MacOS extended (journaled), and not be used for time machine. It should not be on a memory stick, SD or similar. It stands to reason that if you want any sort of reasonable performance it should be a fast drive with a fast connection.

See

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517

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Answer 5

Bavvy Author

Level 1

11 points

Nov 9, 2020 11:41 PM in response to TonyCollinet

Thanks Tony for your response.

The SSD is physically connected to the Mac via USB C adaptor (not network drive) as my MacBook has only one USB C port.

The formatting of the HDD is Ex-FAT.

Its not used as Time Machine backup drive.

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Answer 6

Nov 10, 2020 12:01 AM in response to Bavvy

I can't say for certain that is what is causing the problem - but Photos is known not to work correctly on an incorrectly formatted disk - and worse, you risk losing your photos.

I would suggest the first step is to copy the library back to your internal disk then reformat the external one.

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Answer 7

Bavvy Author

Level 1

11 points

Nov 11, 2020 3:27 AM in response to léonie

Thanks a lot Ieonie for your response.

I could not create a second partition on my ExFAT formatted SSD as the primary partition map was with Master Boot record. So I had to transfer all its contents to a Windows PC.

Next, I had to reformat my SSD with GUID partition Map and then created an ExFAT Partition and Mac OS Journaled partition.

Moved back my photos library file from windows PC to the newly created ExFAT partition on the SSD (that was the only one visible on the PC) and finally moved it from ExFAT partition of SSD to the Mac OS Journaled partition on SSD (when the SSD was connected to Mac - I could access both partitions).

Restarted the photos app with Alt key pressed and I could connect back to the old photos library created on the SSD (as the SSD volume name is same as before and library name is also same as before).

However, still face recognition did not start :(

Could you suggest what could be the cause now? Should I keep the photos App minimised (and not quit the app completely??)

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Photos App - not scanning for faces

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