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  • MacOS 10.13.6 (high sierra)
  • Photos 3.0 (3291.13.230)

I have performed a 'rebuild' of the System Library of my 'Photos' app. By that, I mean that I performed the following steps :

  • Closed Photos
  • Deleted the 'Photos Library' file from my hard drive (on my localized system this file is named 'Bilder-bibliotek')
  • Restarted Photos.
  • The app detects that the Library file is missing and makes me create a new one
  • Then I went to the preferences and did two things : 1) Set this new library as what Photos calls the 'system library', 2) Enabled iCloud on it (with setting 'Optimize Mac Storage' and 'Copy items to the photo library')

Now this new Library file is supposed to be very much alike the one I deleted; and indeed it is : the app has started re-downloading most pictures locally and I can see them in the app, I can even scroll downwards to go backwards in time. I see that the pictures are the same as the ones I have in iCloud.com

But there's one problem : The albums are missing. In iCloud.com I have a bunch of albums under "My Albums". But in the app there's no album listed under "My albums".

What could cause this? I have several hypothesis : - Hypothesis #1 : I'm using a localized version of Photos and the app failed to see that the albums under 'My albums' should be the same as the albums under 'Mina album' ? - Hypothesis #2 : I have too little hard drive space. But since the app does not give any visual feedback on what it's doing (downloading, or not finished downloading) I'm supposed to guess that "the albums would appear if the app had enough disk space to finish the download"

What do you think?

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I have my answer. Hypothesis #2 was correct : The app was just working in the background without showing it, and after 3 hours the albums appeared.

I could curse at length the weird UI choices of Mac computers, which are always so dumbed down that they end up being more confusing than other software, but I'll leave it there.

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    In short, it was lack of patience with a low priority background task, dependant on your current computer usage & download speed. High priority tasks get 'thermometer' indicators, low priority tasks don't. Can you imagine how irritating thermometers for such as your hourly backup would be?
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 11, 2021 at 8:40
  • Lol the sync'ing had stopped entirely because of low hard drive space-- but there was no feedback of that, so my patience had nothing to do with it. Plus, having a loader for every item is how it is in every other syncing app in the world: Dropbox, Sync, etc. There's literally a 'thermometer' on each item like you said. Not going to argue with you.
    – jeancallisti
    Commented Jul 11, 2021 at 11:16

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