How to delete and rebuild photos library on MacBook?

[scubacat]

I have a MacBook Pro and my photo library for some reason has duplicates of most of my photos. The duplicates are not appearing on the iPhone photo library, so it seems that the problem is with the computer alone. I've tried the Repair library option which didn't help, I turned off Photos in the iCloud section on my MacBook which gave me a warning saying ~5000 photos would be deleted from the MacBook, but nothing changed and all photos remained on my computer. Other than manually going through all the photos and deleting the duplicates, how can I rebuild my library on my MacBook and not ruin the cloud library? I'd like to delete everything and have it redownload the library from the cloud, but I don't want to accidentally delete the cloud backup.

 

[JamesMay82]

I have a similar issue that’s happened recently but I think it’s from when I merged some of my wife’s library into mine.

It’s a pain in the ass but I’m just deleting the library and then re importing it back into photos.

I’m doing this using back ups I have in finder but there are some photos and videos I don’t have in finder so I’m having to download from iCloud before I can wipe the library and that is taken 2 days so far and it’s just incredibly slow. I must admit it’s put
Me off trusting the cloud for my photos. I might start keeping the library localised and then just syncing the old fashioned way to my phone..

 

[KALLT]

Maybe it is worth waiting for macOS Venture, because that has an option to detect and merge duplicates as well.

 

[ThrowerGB]

I have a MacBook Pro and my photo library for some reason has duplicates of most of my photos. The duplicates are not appearing on the iPhone photo library, so it seems that the problem is with the computer alone. I've tried the Repair library option which didn't help, I turned off Photos in the iCloud section on my MacBook which gave me a warning saying ~5000 photos would be deleted from the MacBook, but nothing changed and all photos remained on my computer. Other than manually going through all the photos and deleting the duplicates, how can I rebuild my library on my MacBook and not ruin the cloud library? I'd like to delete everything and have it redownload the library from the cloud, but I don't want to accidentally delete the cloud backup.

You might try Duplicate Annihilator for Photos by Propaganda Software at https://brattoo.com/propaganda/#photos
They've been around for quite a while. Their software works well and is highly regarded. User support is the best I've seen.