Apple Photos restore taking hours after macOS 26.1 update

NormShea wrote:

Updated to MacOS 26.1 and now Apple Photos is doing a "restore" that is taking hours before the program will open.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

Are you saying each and every time you launch the Photos.app— that is the behavior you are seeing???

Try launching the Photos.app holding the Shift key down, and compare your results.

See if there is anything here:

Repair your photo library on Mac

Restore a photo library from Time Machine on Mac

NormShea wrote:

Updated to 26.1 last night and opened Photos for the first time since update this morning. I have a screen in Photos that says it is now 64% done restoring after almost 3 hours. I do have a lot of photos but just curious if this is happening to anyone else. I don't want to stop it cause I'm afraid it will corrupt something.

26.0.1 to 26.1 or from some other macOS is hard to speculate further without details...

What I can say— if it is in process and progressing I would not stop it.

Let it complete then report back if you still have an issue.

NormShea wrote:

The update was from 26.0.1, I think, to 26.1 (25B78). The Photos app finally did open. I'm not sure exactly when it actually finished but I'd guess it took about 5-6 hours total to complete the "restore" process. Everything seems fine though with the content, all the images seem to be there. Maybe it was a just a rebuild of the photo library. Anyway, appreciate the assistance.

Thanks for your update NormShea, appreciate it.