Photos search not working

[VitoBotta]

I had a big photo library on my MBP Pro M3 Pro with photos and videos synced at their original resolution, but it was taking too much space (300 GB out of 1 TB drive). So I deleted it and created a new library, which synced with iCloud overnight with the "optimize storage" option enabled and now it uses 1/10 of the space it used before which is awesome. However the search functionality is not working at all and doesn't find anything, regardless of what I am searching for.

Can this be a Sequoia issue or some issue that also happens on other versions? The library I am trying to search in is a shared library and syncing seems to have finished. Any suggestions?

 

[gilby101]

now it uses 1/10 of the space it used before which is awesome.

Awesome re disk space, but there are tradeoffs!

Your Mac doesn't have all the photo content and metadata required to fully index it with Spotlight. But I would expect some searches (e.g. by file name at a minimum) to work. Have you left your Mac running for while (e.g. overnight) to give Spotlight time to do some indexing?

You are also losing the ability to do a full backup with Time Machine - but maybe you don't worry about backup. I would always have at least one Mac without optimise storage just so that I can get a decent backup.

 

[VitoBotta]

Awesome re disk space, but there are tradeoffs!

Your Mac doesn't have all the photo content and metadata required to fully index it with Spotlight. But I would expect some searches (e.g. by file name at a minimum) to work. Have you left your Mac running for while (e.g. overnight) to give Spotlight time to do some indexing?

You are also losing the ability to do a full backup with Time Machine - but maybe you don't worry about backup. I would always have at least one Mac without optimise storage just so that I can get a decent backup.

Actually since my last message seems to have finished syncing all the metadata or something, because now all searches work perfectly! I can search e.g. for "dogs", "flowers", "wedding video" etc and they all do work.

I could move the library to an external drive and sync full sizes of the files, but I tried and when I eject the drive because I need to go somewhere with the laptop, something prevents the ejection and I think it's iCloud syncing, so I need to forcefully eject which I don't like.

 

[gilby101]

Actually since my last message seems to have finished syncing all the metadata or something, because now all searches work perfectly! I can search e.g. for "dogs", "flowers", "wedding video" etc and they all do work.

That is good news. I didn't expect the content searches to work. Obviously I was too pessimistic.

I could move the library to an external drive and sync full sizes of the files, but I tried and when I eject the drive because I need to go somewhere with the laptop, something prevents the ejection and I think it's iCloud syncing, so I need to forcefully eject which I don't like.

One way round that would be to shutdown the laptop. Not nice though - I don't shutdown my MacBook for weeks on end.

 

[VitoBotta]

That is good news. I didn't expect the content searches to work. Obviously I was too pessimistic.

One way round that would be to shutdown the laptop. Not nice though - I don't shutdown my MacBook for weeks on end.

I very, very rarely shut it down too. I have so many things open for work that it's annoying to set everything up each time if I shut down