Photos System library on and External SSD formatted in APFS doesn't seem to run Photoanalysisd or photolibraryd

Question

Photos System library on and External SSD formatted in APFS doesn't seem to run Photoanalysisd or photolibraryd

I'm running Photos Version 10.0 (770.0.170) on a 2023 iMac with Sequoia 15.6.1. I moved my Data and Pictures to an external SSD. It ran OK for a long time then recently the SSD drive became corrupted. I erased and partitioned the SSD and restored my Pictures from a Time Machine Backup. Now it displays some people but many pictures have lost the facial names. I've tried letting the Photos app work over several nights. I have tried this both with the Photos app active on the dock with a black dot and also shut down. I see no activity on the photoanalysisd or photolibraryd processes on Activity monitor. These both show CPU times but always 0% CPU. I have also manually selected and named about 20 people 'seed' the recognition. Any ideas on getting the app to analyse for faces/people?

iMac 24″

Posted on Sep 14, 2025 02:06 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 15, 2025 06:56 AM in response to iainfromvictoria

iainfromvictoria wrote: … I have also manually selected and named about 20 people 'seed' the recognition. Any ideas on getting the app to analyse for faces/people?

Photos collects similar faces into albums-- naming doesn't change that in any way. Manually identifying unrecognized faces puts those in the same album as recognized faces, but it has not effect on recognizing new faces.

Are you using iCloud Photos?

Do you have "Optimize Storage" turned on?

To narrow things down, try these steps:

Restart the computer (of course)
Re-start in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes, and it often helps. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this:

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

Use another library if you have one, or make a small test Library with a few pictures in it and see if the same thing happens. You can create a new Library by closing Photos and then option-clicking on the Photos icon.
Make a new user and see if the same problem recurs with it. This is a bit harder, because a new user can't access a different user's stuff. You should use a new Library like above, or you would need to move your Library out of your own user's folder up to the general "Users" folder.
Rebuild your Photos Library--close Photos and re-launch by option-command-clicking the app icon. If you use iCloud Photos, it’s possible that this will cause a re-sync that lasts long enough to make you nervous.

The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.

Let us know what happens…

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