Photos search on Mac Mini running Mac OS Sequoia is broken
Ever since upgrading to Mac OS Sequoia the search function in Photos running on my M1 Mac Mini no longer works. To give some context to this problem I have in excess of 60,000 image in my library and an extensive keyword library and most of the images have full, descriptive captions and locations assigned to them. I also make full use of albums to further aid managing my image library.
I have searched extensively on the internet to seek assistance in resolving the with no real answers as to why after upgrading to Mac OS Sequoia I cannot get the search function to work. I then consulted ChatGPT and I have to confess been completely blown away by the length and breadth of the troubleshooting suggestions they have provided. Incidentally, they stated in the overview that this apparent loss of the search function in Photos on the Mac after upgrading to Mac OS Sequoia is quite a common one. Following is the list of fixes I have tried with none of them resolving the issue.
- Rebuilt the Photos library
- In Settings/Spotlight added the Photos Library to the exclude list and then removed it after five minutes or so in an effort to force Spotlight to reindex the search library in Photos
- Opened the Photos package and found the search folder and removed it so as to force the Photos app to build a new search folder
- Using Terminal stopped the mdutil process and then restarted the process
- Again using Terminal, forced the mdutil to rebuild the Spotlight index
None of these troubleshooting processes have succeeded in restoring the search function in the Photos app on my Mac Mini.
The Keyword library is still intact in that I can still create new keywords and edit the Keyword library and all of my images still have their assigned keywords and captions attached to them.
The interesting thing is that existing Keywords and newly created ones are visible on the Photos app on my iPhone and iPad and I can perform successful searches on iOS and iPad OS. So this shows that Photos on my Mac Mini is successfully syncing to Photos in iCloud.
One workaround that chatGPT suggested for searching for images with keywords and caption assigned to them is to create a smart album using keyword data and caption data as part of the conditions. This does work which proves that keyword and caption data is intact.
Taking all of the above troubleshooting in consideration, conducting a Search in Photos comes back with the result of nothing or a vague message that Photos is reindexing search. I get it that this may be the case but I have now left Photos as the only app open on my Mac for in excess of five days now and it still states that that it is reindexing, which leads me to believe - after all of the above troubleshooting - that the search Photos in Mac OS Sequoia is broke - especially considering that the search function is working normally in iOS and iPad OS.
i am running MacOS Sequoia 15.4.1 on an M1 Mac Mini with 16GB of Ram and a 1TB SSD hard drive. I have 360GB of free space on the SSD.
Any assistance with this annoying problem would be greatly appreciated.
