Photos People Album Issues and questions

[kylew1212]

Inside the Photos app there is a people album that is supposed to be automatically updated when a device is on charge. In iOS 10 this worked for me, as in it updated. Yes, there were issues, but it updated.

So here's my issue I upgraded to an iPhone X about 2 months ago. Since upgrading Photos has never completed the face detection, even though I charge it multiple times a week. Also I am having issues with my iPad running 11.3 updating, but I am under the impression that this might be a beta issue. Prior to my upgrade I had an iPhone 6S running iOS 11, but I am not sure if it was up to date or not.

Here are my questions:

1. Is there any difference for the processing with a charger, as in wired vs wireless?
2. Is face detection completing for you?
3. Do you have any suggestions to try? I have rebooted..
4. How does the iOS 11 face detection syncing work? I don't understand why my Mac can't scan the faces and just sync to other devices?

Thank you for your help!

 

[powerocool]

Same problem. I have about 60,000 photos. It's still processing since I got the iPhone X. I've tried everything, including resetting the phone a few days ago. Not looking good.

Apple should really do these processing in the cloud. I'm ok with the Google approach, detect in one place and everywhere else is detected.

 

[Shirasaki]

The charging method should not matter. For me? I desperately want to delete those random faces so that my fav girl faces could be in the thumbnail. But it is completed.

I’m not sure about the scan part. But Apple definitely could just let the Mac scan the face and sync to other devices.

 

[kylew1212]

Same problem. I have about 60,000 photos. It's still processing since I got the iPhone X. I've tried everything, including resetting the phone a few days ago. Not looking good.

Apple should really do these processing in the cloud. I'm ok with the Google approach, detect in one place and everywhere else is detected.

I have 9-10,000, along with some videos.

I don't understand how the sync is supposed to work. Face detection was added in iOS 10, with no sync between devices. In iOS11 the sync between devices was added. However it seems that the device has to do a complete scan before it can sync anything which is extremely confusing as that doesn't seem like a sync.


--- EDIT ---
Recently I haven't been able to get my MBP, iPP, or iPhone X to scan completely.
[doublepost=1518101046][/doublepost]Last night I set all of my photos to download on my iPad Pro, it will be on charge all day today so we will see if it can scan.

I have read where Optimize Storage doesn't scan very well, so I'm trying Keep Originals to see if it will scan now.

As a note, my iPhone X has had every picture downloaded for months and still hasn't completed scanning.

 

[cynics]

I have 9-10,000, along with some videos.

I don't understand how the sync is supposed to work. Face detection was added in iOS 10, with no sync between devices. In iOS11 the sync between devices was added. However it seems that the device has to do a complete scan before it can sync anything which is extremely confusing as that doesn't seem like a sync.


--- EDIT ---
Recently I haven't been able to get my MBP, iPP, or iPhone X to scan completely.

I have about half as many photos and even less are of faces and it took weeks. It wasn’t until I read this thread that I noticed it wasn’t telling me it needed to sync anymore.

I went to each individual person and scrolled down and “confirmed additional faces”. I don’t know if this sped it up or slowed it down (more recognized faces). But it eventually did finish.

 

[powerocool]

A few observations on all the methods I've tried:

- Resetting the Phone: the first 20,000 or 40,000 photos will process extremely fast, about 20,000 per day. Then at some point it will hang. Then about 100 photos per night.

- Resetting the people album (by select all in Photos.app on MacOS, hit delete): This will not change the number of photos scanned. Faces will show up again. No difference in processing speed.

- Turn off, then turn on iCloud photo sharing: This will cause all the existing downloaded photos to be re-uploaded to iCloud then compared with iCloud copy. No difference in scanning. It's just a waste of time.

- Downloading all photos locally to iPhone: my library is too big, but I still ignored the warning. It did not make a difference.

So now I've basically tried everything I can on the iPhone X. Only one more thing to do, which is not realistic: plug in the phone and not touch it for a week / a month, maybe it will help.

 

[kylew1212]

I don't think I had any scanning issues on iOS 10...
I am going to contact Apple Support.

 

[powerocool]

I doubt Apple Support knows more, they probably just recommend reset and restore from backup.

I have another theory that I'm going to test out:
Whenever there's too many unprocessed photos, the process would be extremely slow, because it maybe is trying to compare too many photos? i.e. if you have 10,000 processed, with 40,000 remaining. It would be very slow. But if you have 10,000 processed with 1,000 remaining, it might be better. That would explain why every time I restore, it processes very fast in the beginning and slows down once all photos are downloaded.

I'm going to connect to wifi and let it download a batch, process, then disconnect from wifi, wait until the processing catches up. Then connect back on wifi to download another batch. Never let it have more than 10,000 unprocessed photos.

Wish me luck.

EDIT:
29,000 processed so far, still moving. Good sign.

EDIT 2:
It’s been 2 days and photos have been mostly scanned. I can now see a list of faces. Although on the bottom of the list it still says it will keep scanning if phone is locked and plugged in.

Great success. Might not be related, but finally fixed for me.

 

[kylew1212]

That is a good sign! How do you determine how many have been done on an iOS device?

 

[PeLaNo]

This used to happen to me when iOS 10 first came out.
And since 10.2 it’s gone.
Surprise to hear that it’s still exist.

 

[TimFL1]

iOS 11 doesn't sync the faces it merely syncs the confirmations or "this is not that person" data and then triggers a rescan on the new devices with said data taken in mind. It's the same algorithm on macOS and iOS, that's why the people album comes up identical on all your devices.

The only gripe I have with the system is that you have no way of seeing new faces in the peoples album sometimes (like a button "Show new faces" you can add), you have to go to pictures and swipe up to see if there is an unknown face detected.

 

[Nikhil72]

I personally think the perpetual scanning is just how the feature works given that it's always analyzing your library for new faces and to tune its algorithm whenever the phone is off and charging. The scanning message itself makes it seem like the process is ongoing, but if it were, you'd see heavy CPU usage and battery drain.

 

[powerocool]

The problem is not the perpetual scanning. It was being stuck in a white page with the message like this for months on the latest iPhone X, with the phone charged overnight every night. Some nights not a single photo will scan, some nights a mere 100 photos will be scanned. With this rate, my library of 70,000 photos will take 2 years to finish. I'd have another phone by then, and have the process repeated again. Feels broken.

I'd much like the server scan my images on iCloud, or one of my devices scan my photos and sync'd with all other devices. Saves much energy around the world with billions of active iOS devices.

 

[kylew1212]

My iPhone X finally completed scanning sometime over the weekend. I noticed last night that it was fully scanned.

I would like it to actually sync the data similar to what powerocool said above. Ideally my macbook would scan all the faces and then sync to my iPad or iPhone. If the iPad or iPhone were in a standby state on charge then they could scan also. I just don't want them to be required to scan because it takes so forever for each device to scan the entire library.

 

[jedwards87]

Same problem. I have about 60,000 photos. It's still processing since I got the iPhone X. I've tried everything, including resetting the phone a few days ago. Not looking good.

Apple should really do these processing in the cloud. I'm ok with the Google approach, detect in one place and everywhere else is detected.

I wish Apple would do this in the cloud too. I appreciate Apple's stance on privacy and all but sometimes I think it really hurts the user experience. I don't know if it is possible but a nice balance would be nice.

 

[kylew1212]

I wish Apple would do this in the cloud too. I appreciate Apple's stance on privacy and all but sometimes I think it really hurts the user experience. I don't know if it is possible but a nice balance would be nice.

I don't care about cloud scanning. I just want the scan to be sync'ed so that I don't have to scan on every device, they can all work together.

 

[powerocool]

I don't care about cloud scanning. I just want the scan to be sync'ed so that I don't have to scan on every device, they can all work together.

I believe "Memories" are done this way already - One device generates the memories, then sync'd to other devices. I don't see why faces can't be done this way. This is getting a little annoying for the sake of privacy.

 

[TimFL1]

But faces do sync because I, jokingly, added my dogs face on macOS (because then I can search for the dogs name to see pictures with it) and I do have access to said dogs face data on my iOS devices.

I don‘t think faces supports animals so that‘s clear evidence that they do at least sync most of the data (with your device probably also triggering a new scan with the new data points).

 

[kylew1212]

But faces do sync because I, jokingly, added my dogs face on macOS (because then I can search for the dogs name to see pictures with it) and I do have access to said dogs face data on my iOS devices.

I don‘t think faces supports animals so that‘s clear evidence that they do at least sync most of the data (with your device probably also triggering a new scan with the new data points).

It looks like only the confirmations sync, because each device has to scan the entire library. In a true sync I don't believe each device would need to scan the entire library.

 

[TimFL1]

It looks like only the confirmations sync, because each device has to scan the entire library. In a true sync I don't believe each device would need to scan the entire library.

It probably syncs the confirmations or „this is not that person“ data and the custom face data one added by hand (e.g. animals). Makes sense.

 

[Jason B]

How do we get this to work for pets. There had to be a way.

 

[TimFL1]

How do we get this to work for pets. There had to be a way.

If you have a Mac you can manually add a face to an image (your pet) and it will sync the face album over to your iOS devices. There currently doesn't seem to be a way to manually add a face circle to an image on iOS.

 

[Jason B]

If you have a Mac you can manually add a face to an image (your pet) and it will sync the face album over to your iOS devices. There currently doesn't seem to be a way to manually add a face circle to an image on iOS.

Don't have a mac, BUT, I just found this out. In photos if you type in DOG, you will see all dog pics! I never knew you could do this, and there's a ton more you can search for. I don't know if this is something widely know, but now things are much easier. Before I only ever used to tape in a date or a month to find pics, but didn't know that search is now super specific!