I am trying to organize my photos on my MacBook. I have created a smart album that is meant to be any pictures not in albums. I am creating albums that I can then place the photos from the smart album at which time they should delete from the smart album but they’re not in all cases and there are photos in the smart album that are also in albums. What am I doing wrong?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.7
There are two known problems with the smart album "Album > is not > Any".
Problems with the Smart Album Rule: Album is not Any in Photos 5.0 - Apple Community
There are two known problems with the smart album "Album > is not > Any".
Problems with the Smart Album Rule: Album is not Any in Photos 5.0 - Apple Community
léonie wrote: … problems with the smart album "Album > is not > Any". It is not always updating instantly. It may take some time, until items will be removed from the smart album, Sometimes it helps to quit Photos to force it to save all recent changes to the library and update the smart albums.
I've seen this with other "not" things, I think. I choose favorites by marking things that are not to be favorite, and using "not marked" to remove those so I can work on the rest. Sometimes they don't go away, and I have to quit to get it to work again. I thought it was just me…
Can you show us a screenshot of your smart album rule?
Have you rebooted lately?
Have you tried starting in Safe Mode?
First, if you upgrade to Sequoia, then there is a filter
to show only pictures that are not in an album. But we understand if upgrading is not possible for you.
Here is my "Not in Album" Smart Album:
This works as well as the filter. I have a number of Smart Albums that I use like you suggest-- to find things, fix them, and then they disappear; they work well for me, as expected.
One thing that might interfere or slow down the operation of the Smart Album is having too little free storage space. Apple recommends that you keep at least 10% of your hard drive free. I've found problems when my storage has gotten to less than 150GB with a 1 TB drive. Can you check System Settings>General>Storage to see what the situation is. I just saw that I need to deal with mine!
With 14000 items found, it might take a while for the smart album to catch up.
Your best bet is to go through the library and do a first cut of getting your images into albums. Personally, I would try to get the 14000 down to a few thousand before using the "not in album" smart album. Note that Richard has only *47* items outside of albums.
Thank you for the confirmation, Richard. Good to know I am not alone.
The Photos.app seems to be caching a lot of the recent changes in program memory and not updating the library instantly. So it will take a while until the smart albums are updating, particularly for "not" things. I like this term!
Rule based on "Not" require a scan of all related library items.
We may notice that items still need saving to the library, when Photos is needing a very long time to quit, and we have to wait before we can shut down the Mac.
Or when recently imported photos are missing after Photos crashed unexpectedly.
Hi Richard, thanks for responding. Unfortunately I'm not able to upgrade to Sequoia. My laptop is apparently a 2018 even though I bought it in 2019. I checked my storage space and it is 55gb out of 250gb so I think I'm okay there but getting close. I'm wondering about optimizing my storage by having everything in iCloud. As for my SMART album, I just have the one that is supposed to hold all of the photos that are not in an actual folder and delete when I move them to an album. That isn't happening. I am attaching a screenshot below in response to another response.
Hi Keith, thanks for responding. This is a screenshot of my smart album. I thought it also had date parameters of 10/22/2003 to current date but those aren't showing. I tried to start up in Safe Mode by following the link you provided but I can't find the word 'chip' or 'processor'. Maybe my laptop is too old? When I originally began this project several years ago, I was helped by someone named Keith at Apple. Would that have been you?
[Edited by Moderator]
I apologize. I did find the word processor. I will attempt the Safe Mode
Nope, not me.
I have questions about photo organization in MacBook
