An especially particular question about if Photos on Sonoma can/will analyze photos for faces when disconnected from the Internet?

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Level 1

25 points

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″

Posted on Jul 14, 2024 6:20 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

163,176 points

Jul 14, 2024 10:46 AM in response to jobiegermano

According to

Privacy - Apple

All this work is done on the device only.

Photos is also designed so that the face recognition and scene and object detection — which power features like For You, Memories, Sharing Suggestions, and the People album — happen on device instead of in the cloud."

What does "completely blow away all media" mean?

Phots is not designed as a networked app, if that's any help. Networked access to the database risks silent corruption and dataloss. There are apps that will do this, but they're a lot more expensive - as in hundreds of dollars per seat.

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Answer 2

jobiegermano Author

Level 1

25 points

Jul 14, 2024 12:42 PM in response to jobiegermano

Thanks for the reply; part of this process included a simple DB repair, and expectedly, doing a repair and letting it rebuild on the machine I pulled from the network is much faster! I have a pretty in-depth write up I typed in Reddit, and can copy-paste here for deeper explanation, the I’ve cliff notes are that I have an iCloud library that has a well established sync for a couple years now with an iPhone in the mix as well. At this point, all systems syncing (or soon to be syncing) can all be offline until this is completed. The resulting requirement will be to end up with the Sonoma removed from the equation and for the library [that I’ve spent offer a year curating about 30k items that are without (almost) any unknown/unnamed people/pets] to exist on four separate devices that will not be associated with the Apple ID yet will still provide to each end user a fully functioning, digital album that leverages the People feature of Photos.

That was a mouthful!

The curated album built on Sonoma Photos v9 and connected to iCloud will likely not end up with a bot copy. Instead, the copies will end up on:

Monterey Photos v8

High Sierra Photos v7

iPhone XR (iOS v17) Photos App

iPad Air 3 (iPadOS v17) Photos App

Once the library is on those devices, the Apple ID will need to sign out leaving behind a full copy, but the stretch goal is that hopefully the recipients, if they want, can further leverage the established faces database and continue to import future family photos giving a huge jump start on a task that would all find WAY to complicated to start on their own.

**** The problem ****

The database was looking solid syncing between Sonoma and an iPhone, but… mistakes were made. The Monterey was a successful test case about a month ago and the High Sierra and iPad were just donated and instead of being methodical… all devices were connected at the same time, two being an initial stage sync and the Monterey having been removed from the Apple ID for months. And not only were they all connected at the same time both receiving their first bits of data, they haphazardly and at different times had db repairs initiated that would delete and resync and push out.

It was a mess and there were so many matching conflicts I just can’t nailed believe it’ll ever be able to clean up well.

At this point, I have an even better curated .photoslibrary that contains full offline versions of all media, faces identified, keyword hierarchy set, memories, etc., etc, etc.

i also have multiple point in time air gapped versions of the entire .photoslibrary file as well as full exports of all media individually as both unmodified originals and HEIC/1080p.

If I could, I’d just use a brand new temp Apple ID, but I need certain connections to exist, the what I’m hoping for is a way to *ENSURE * all data that is stored in iCloud read matches what’s stored in .photoslibrary to be deleted (preferably) or at minimum overwritten by the Sonoma library when I plus that system back into the network. I will have all other turned off or reset until the iCloud is a verified *PERFECT* copy in sync, then I’ll either bring up the iPadOS 17 or the Monterey and for that one to sync, and then the next, and finally the a High Sierra last.

I have a second set of media to bring in that will use the normal Input method. I’m still unsure if I should be it before the initial population of the hopefully empty iCloud library or if I should get the first half of the end solution in place and get up to the point I have all 5 systems in sync and then import it to Sonoma and let it work itself out.

After the debacle I saw when Sonoma, Monterey, High Sierra, iPadOS, and iOS all tried to participate in one sync… I’m skeptical, but that fact multiple libraries were doing full reload DB repairs and stepping all over each other at the same time certainly could have been user error!

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