{"id":39042,"date":"2023-04-12T16:28:52","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T20:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=39042"},"modified":"2023-04-12T16:28:52","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T20:28:52","slug":"photos-spotlight-and-icloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/12\/photos-spotlight-and-icloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos, Spotlight, and iCloud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

So I assumed this message would disappear after my Mac figured out I had moved its library. A week later, it has not disappeared and images from Photos are, indeed, not searchable in Spotlight. Apple’s documentation implies Spotlight will work for whichever library is the system one, but the message in Photos implies that libraries stored on external drives will not be indexed.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

My Mac has been dutifully downloading tens of thousands of original media files from iCloud until earlier this week when it decided to stop. The only information I have is a message in Photos, saying there are 42 originals not yet downloaded — but which ones are missing is anyone’s guess. Photos has Smart Albums but, unlike Music, it does not have a filtering criteria for whether the original file has been downloaded. There does not appear to be any logging, nor any status window. While writing this paragraph, I can see the library file slowly increasing in size; however, the number of original files remaining to be downloaded has not budged.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Happily, after repairing my library and waiting for it to reconcile with iCloud, it seems there were only 21 missing original media files which needed a local copy, and they seem to have downloaded. I still do not know what they were. I only have myself to blame for getting to this point. Even so, the lack of any way for me to figure out which items are only in iCloud and not on my local drive is a baffling omission. It is not quite a silent failure<\/a> but it is in the spirit of one, where Apple seems to have assumed that its software will perform correctly and users should never need to intervene. In the real world, I just wanted to know what it was waiting on.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Like Josh Hill, he was using optimized photo storage. I think this is really common, even among people who know better, because it’s so much easier. Apple continues to use expensive and relatively low capacity SSDs, so many photo libraries just won’t fit on internal storage.<\/p>\n

External storage is then the only way to download originals and, thus, back up your library, but it’s a pain, especially with a portable Mac. Even if you do get external storage and figure out how to use it with Photos, it doesn’t work the way you would want. Aside from the potential Spotlight limitation, having your whole photo library on the external drive is not ideal. That drive is then required to do anything with Photos, and performance is worse because you can’t keep the photo database on your fastest storage.<\/p>\n

With Lightroom, I can keep metadata and thumbnails on the internal SSD, while offloading older originals to secondary storage. Apple’s Aperture could do stuff like this, too, but it’s not possible with Photos.<\/p>\n\n

Scott Gruby<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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You would think that Apple would put something in iCloud Photos that would warn you if 15K pictures were deleted. I went to look for a photo today and found out that I no longer had my full library. On disc, it was down to 85GB from 185GB. Luckily I had a separate backup from mid February and was able to import the photos.<\/p>\n

Daily backups that overwrite your data only protects against hardware failure. Time Machine to a local drive (TM to a network sucks) or rotating external drives are key.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n