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Photos help: "People will finish updating when Photos is in the background."

srbNYC

srbNYC

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 7, 2020
1,883
1,744
New York, NY
I saw a couple of old abandoned threads on this, so hope it's ok to post here now.

I spend some time yesterday (on my M1 MBA) scanning in some old photos and identifying a lot of the names and faces and cleaning up some multiple names. (I already had the majority of faces in my library identified before. This is only a couple dozen additions.) Now I have dozens of multiple listings for the same people, and on the bottom of each of their "pages," it says "Updating {name}... Photos will finish updating when Photos is in the background."

So. Many. Questions.
  • What does "in the background" mean or want me to do? Keep Photos open? Quit the app, and it will work on its own? Keep my MBA awake at all times?
  • As previously cited by folks, it's taking forever. Does anyone have any clues of any practice (see above) that makes it go as fast as it can. Does it work better while Photos is launched or quit? (PS I don't use iCloud photos, but I do use Photo Stream.) There's no indicator of progress.
  • What is it actually doing?
Thanks for any info or advice.
 
Last edited:
srbNYC said:
I saw a couple of old abandoned threads on this, so hope it's ok to post here now.

I spend some time yesterday (on my M1 MBA) scanning in some old photos and identifying a lot of the names and faces and cleaning up some multiple names. (I already had the majority of faces in my library identified before. This is only a couple dozen additions.) Now I have dozens of multiple listings for the same people, and on the bottom of each of their "pages," it says "Updating {name}... Photos will finish updating when Photos is in the background."

So. Many. Questions.
  • What does "in the background" mean or want me to do? Keep Photos open? Quit the app, and it will work on its own? Keep my MBA awake at all times?
  • As previously cited by folks, it's taking forever. Does anyone have any clues of any practice (see above) that makes it go as fast as it can. Does it work better while Photos is launched or quit? (PS I don't use iCloud photos, but I do use Photo Stream.) There's no indicator of progress.
  • What is it actually doing?
Thanks for any info or advice.
Click to expand...
Bumping this thread because I had the same questions.
 
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This is normal for Photos. It will sometimes take days to complete the names and faces. Photos does this using a very low priority and normally will not interfere with other apps.

You can minimize Photos if you like. It will continue in the background. If you have any question about what's going on, open your Activity Monitor and you will be able to see Photos working in the background.
 
Mine finally cleared up, not sure where or when. Still curious: @chsca, do you know—when it says "in the background," and you mention minimizing—does that mean the app needs to stay open during this process?

Also, my Photos app has said "Uploading 1 item" for a month. I can Pause or Resume, but it never changes.
 
Last edited:
srbNYC said:
Mine finally cleared up, not sure where or when. Still curious: @chsca, do you know—when it says "in the background," and you mention minimizing—does that mean the app needs to stay open during this process?

Also, my Photos app has said "Uploading 1 item" for a month. I can Pause or Resume, but it never changes.
Click to expand...
I can't say with 100% certainty, but in this particular case my understanding is that "background" does not require the Photos app to be open and minimized.

There are a lot of background processes on modern computers that do not require the associated app to be open. Syncing with cloud services is a top example - the data will sync so that it is ready to go when the app is opened. Another example is what Photos is doing when updating "People." A fair amount of computing resources are used for processes like face recognition and Memory creation, so the system will wait for downtime before running them. Once you "name" a new face the system churns through the entire library looking for possible matches to that face. Naming many faces naturally requires even more time and resources, work that ought to be done when the system is idle rather than in active use.

As to the one "uploading" item... It's likely an unexpected behavior. If you can isolate which image it is (by comparing the Library on your Mac to either iCloud.com or an iOS device) you may find that either everything has actually been uploaded, or there's something about the item contributing to the problem (large video, image corruption, image format, etc.).
 
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ApfelKuchen said:
I can't say with 100% certainty, but in this particular case my understanding is that "background" does not require the Photos app to be open and minimized.
Click to expand...
That is also my understanding but I usually recommend minimizing just in case the background process is not working. But like I stated above, you can always check on that from your Activity Monitor.
 
srbNYC said:
Thanks for all the info. Don't think I know how to do this part, though.
Click to expand...
The "comparing" part is very manual - just comparing the images displayed in one place to the other. If you have an iPhone or iPad, open Photos there and look at Library. If you only have the Mac, then open a browser, go to iCloud.com, log in, and take a look at the Photos section.
 
Thanks again. All the other sources seem to be fully uploaded. Mac photos still says it's working on one...
 
Can I ask another Photos-related question? I have iCloud photos going, and it sync everything perfectly. However, when I hard-connect my iPhone for a wired sync, There are 51 photos on my iPhone that Photos wants to import; they're duplcates of photos that are already in may library.

I'm thinking they're some remnant of the Camera Roll or something like that? Trouble is, I don't know how to delete them from my phone. Can't seem to on my Mac while the phone is connected. I can select them, but only for import. And I can't find any way to find them on the phone itself. I'm sure I don't need them.

Help?
 
srbNYC said:
I saw a couple of old abandoned threads on this, so hope it's ok to post here now.

I spend some time yesterday (on my M1 MBA) scanning in some old photos and identifying a lot of the names and faces and cleaning up some multiple names. (I already had the majority of faces in my library identified before. This is only a couple dozen additions.) Now I have dozens of multiple listings for the same people, and on the bottom of each of their "pages," it says "Updating {name}... Photos will finish updating when Photos is in the background."

So. Many. Questions.
  • What does "in the background" mean or want me to do? Keep Photos open? Quit the app, and it will work on its own? Keep my MBA awake at all times?
  • As previously cited by folks, it's taking forever. Does anyone have any clues of any practice (see above) that makes it go as fast as it can. Does it work better while Photos is launched or quit? (PS I don't use iCloud photos, but I do use Photo Stream.) There's no indicator of progress.
  • What is it actually doing?
Thanks for any info or advice.
Click to expand...
About half a decade ago we entered into a new age of what I call Stupid Apple Programming. Intelligent GUI and ergonomic design guides have been tossed in favour of "designing" for an iPhone screen. Apple started it, and now it has been adopted by those posing as computer programmers or web site designers, where it matters not whether the screen is tiny or large, the "designer" will ignore common sense programming, instead opting to make navigating on any device like playing their favourite computer game.

It would be so easy to make this function user directed, but as I'm on Big Sur with the latest version of Photos for this OS, doubtful it will be fixed anytime soon.

A note about one of the first blunders I witnessed. We used to be able to colour code an item on the desktop and it would do so to the whole file or folder name in icon view. In list view, the entire width of the line would be highlighted in the colour we chose. In one OS upgrade we went from that to the tiniest dot possible, at a time that computer screens were getting larger and higher definition. No user control, no option to remain with "classic" configuration.

If a person figures something out now on their own, they should get game points. Gather enough game points and you should win a new computer. ;-)
 
I find 'People' very frustrating. I send feedback to Apple about the issues I have regularly.

It currently won't let update an unnamed face to the current person on my Mac. And I had hoped it would match what it shows on my iPhone, but some People show up named on one and not the other.

Who knows. Maybe it'll get sorted at some point.
 
srbNYC said:
Can I ask another Photos-related question? I have iCloud photos going, and it sync everything perfectly. However, when I hard-connect my iPhone for a wired sync, There are 51 photos on my iPhone that Photos wants to import; they're duplcates of photos that are already in may library.

I'm thinking they're some remnant of the Camera Roll or something like that? Trouble is, I don't know how to delete them from my phone. Can't seem to on my Mac while the phone is connected. I can select them, but only for import. And I can't find any way to find them on the phone itself. I'm sure I don't need them.

Help?
Click to expand...
You can use the built-in Image Capture app to delete those already sync’s photos from the phone.

First, make sure that your photos are synced so that any new photos are synced up. You don’t want to delete them by accident.
While your phone is plugged into the computer...
Open Image Capture
It should display the images on your phone.
Select the old photos
Click on the ? icon. This is the delete icon.
It should delete those photos from the camera but leave them in your Photo library.

(Not sure who thought that was the right icon for “delete” and why it has stayed like that for many years ?)
 
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srbNYC said:
I saw a couple of old abandoned threads on this, so hope it's ok to post here now.

I spend some time yesterday (on my M1 MBA) scanning in some old photos and identifying a lot of the names and faces and cleaning up some multiple names. (I already had the majority of faces in my library identified before. This is only a couple dozen additions.) Now I have dozens of multiple listings for the same people, and on the bottom of each of their "pages," it says "Updating {name}... Photos will finish updating when Photos is in the background."

So. Many. Questions.
  • What does "in the background" mean or want me to do? Keep Photos open? Quit the app, and it will work on its own? Keep my MBA awake at all times?
  • As previously cited by folks, it's taking forever. Does anyone have any clues of any practice (see above) that makes it go as fast as it can. Does it work better while Photos is launched or quit? (PS I don't use iCloud photos, but I do use Photo Stream.) There's no indicator of progress.
  • What is it actually doing?
Thanks for any info or advice.
Click to expand...
Yep, mine has been stuck on "Updating People..." for about FIVE YEARS now. I don't think it's ever going to finish.
 
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