An especially particular question about if Photos on Sonoma can/will analyze photos for faces when disconnected from the Internet?
The scenario is quite specific:
First assume a Sonoma based Mac with a normal and working(ish) implementation of Photos syncing between the Mac and an iPhone, etc.
Then assume turning off “optimize storage” and ensuring all photos are successfully downloaded to the Mac; and specifically tested as such by pulling the network connection / WiFi and exporting the full versions of each photo to a local drive for confirmation.
In such a scenario, does Mac/Sonoma/Photos have the ability to analyze these locally stored photos for people/pet faces, considering there’s no connection with the iCloud servers?
I assume the answer is yes as there simply *HAS* to be an expected use case for customers that have no intention of creating an iCloud account or even have access to the Internet. Many moons ago, the early implementations were before iCloud existed, so you just launched iPhoto and fed it media, waited, and named people; etc.
I’m wondering (but less so) if over the years certain iCloud elements of the process have become too essential to function standalone, but…
…BUT I’m more concerned about the fact that the Photos app will still be expecting to reconnect with the servers at some point might restrict the analysis daemon from executing normally… and…
…AND I have zero idea if the fact that the local library at this time—containing datapoints on portions of the photos that have already been scanned including named people/pets—will benefit local execution by giving it a jumpstart or act as a conflict, not wanting to create a conflict once the connection is eventually restored.
Extra credit: Does anyone have decent guidance on how to completely blow away all media within the iCloud Photos database and then hook a network up to a Mac Sonoma Photos library in a way that will ensure the Mac library is considered the to be authoritative source / known good configuration / gold master / etc.?
Well, that ended up being longer than expected… my bad… I give myself a 1.1% chance at actually garnering a response to this novel. 🥹
MacBook Pro 14″