Photos app crashing when trying to make a smart album using keywords.

Hello fmpstudio,

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities! We see you're having an issue with searching your photos using a keyword, and we'd like to help.

We weren't able to recreate the issue, so let's look at some basic troubleshooting to try. Test again after each step.

Have you restarted your Mac since noticing this happening? If not, go ahead and do that, as a restart can resolve unexpected issues.

Log out, sleep, wake, restart, or shut down your Mac

Is the keyword that you are searching for included in your keyword list? It doesn't need to be for searching, but if the keyword should have been assigned to photos, this can verify it's been used.

Find photos by keyword in Photos on Mac

Try searching using safe mode:

How to use safe mode on your Mac

Information about Smart Albums:

Create Smart Albums to group photos automatically in Photos on Mac

Take care!

Hey fmpstudio,

We did totally misunderstand the question, and for that we apologize.

However, the troubleshooting we shared can be helpful for your Smart Album issue too.

Have you restarted your Mac yet? Does the same thing happen with no other apps open after the restart?

Is the keyword present in your keyword list? If not, that should provide a "nothing found" response, but not the Photos app closing.

Does the same thing happen when using safe mode? It may take longer to finish the start up, as safe mode does some system checks, and can sometimes resolve issues. You'll also see some differences in the display. This is expected with safe mode, and when you restart normally, they'll be gone. Test, restart normally and test again.

The latest macOS for Big Sur is 11.5.2. For Photos it is 6.0, so that is up to date.

Update macOS on Mac

Thank you!

Essentially, using smart albums to find all photos with a keyword is searching by keywords.

Try the following:

1 - As a test launch Photos with the Option key held down and create a new, test library.  Import some photos and test to see if the same problem persists. Does it? This tells us if the problem is limited to your current library or is more wide spread. Then reopen your current library and see if the problem persists

2 - Do you have iCloud Library enabled? If not then launch your library with the Option+Command keys held down and repair the library:

When the repairs are complete test to see if the problem persists or not.

Thanks for the feedback. It's good to know.

You should mark your last post as solved so others will know there's a fix for the problem.