MacOS Photos keep losing MyAlbums

[profdraper]

Perhaps there may be a thread on this elsewhere? If so, please point me there.

Sonoma 14.2.1, once agin when I launch Photos, it then 'updates' the database & promptly loses all of MyAlbums (needless to say, many years of stuff there). This also seems to happen regularly when updating an OS.

PITA & Apple really need to keep their hands off personal data like this. Any solutions?
I see on the Apple support site some of this, but none works.

Second layer is that our phones still shows the correct MyAlbums but of course we don't want to go near syncing because they will likely be lost as well. iCloud is certainly out of the question, even worse BS there but hat is a much longer story ....

 

[profdraper]

To preserve your MyAlbums and prevent potential data loss, you may want to explore alternative methods for backing up and managing your photos. Utilizing external storage or icloud services could provide a more reliable backup solution.

And that is precisely one of the bugs in icloud, will not sync MyAlbums (along with people, places etc). https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251063578?sortBy=best

Need to get away from that one, is rubbish. Investigating AnyTrans, iMazing etc.

Finally: that was not the original question or problem. Why should mac os Photos keep zeroing out all the important contextual information - it should be the master for sync, storage & backup, surely. Yet it keeps deleting MyAlbums, Smart Albums, Shared Albums, people, places.

This issue has been raised many times elsewhere but with no responsefrom Apple & with OSs before Sonoma (ie, when Photos rebuilds its library format after an OS update), eg:

Photos.app - All my albums have gone miss… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Missing album photos - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Why have all my photo albums gone - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Deleting albums in Photos - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

 

[profdraper]

And that is precisely one of the bugs in icloud, will not sync MyAlbums (along with people, places etc). https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251063578?sortBy=best

Need to get away from that one, is rubbish. Investigating AnyTrans, iMazing etc.

Finally: that was not the original question or problem. Why should mac os Photos keep zeroing out all the important contextual information - it should be the master for sync, storage & backup, surely. Yet it keeps deleting MyAlbums, Smart Albums, Shared Albums, people, places.

This issue has been raised many times elsewhere but with no responsefrom Apple & with OSs before Sonoma (ie, when Photos rebuilds its library format after an OS update), eg:

Photos.app - All my albums have gone miss… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Missing album photos - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Why have all my photo albums gone - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Deleting albums in Photos - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Solved by the look of it. Have tried a few of these managers & ended up going with iMazing. Does what it says and bypasses all of Apple's BS & bugs. Including, indeed it does back up copies of MyAlbums on our phones & allows these to be imported back into Mac OS Photos. Also does a lot more (and that surely should be incorporated by Apple now in 2023), including trasferring and syncing media types between iOS devices and Apple computers. https://imazing.com/

It is really poor form on the part of Apple that they target personal data like this then tie it up in a propreitary DB and/or iCloud. Then of course we find out it doesn'tt work as per the hype, eg, MacOS loses MyAlbums regulary, or iCloud does not share of manintain MyAlbums, People or Places, not to mention not freeing up storage on iCloud once we downgraded from iCloud+ to iCloud - an onging case with Apple, still not working, still 30GB of photos on iCloud that don't sync, we don't want of need now.

Fine if they want to hyerventilate about say Logic or FCPX - I can and do buy other much better pro tools. But in the case of family photos, the elderly, music files etc - its a bit rich. This should be far more open than this dodgy behaviour. All seems to have started up a few years ago when a new team started pusing these new services (Apple Music, iCloud+, Games etc, but the marketing arm don't seem to talk to the sw arm very well; and customer service are usually lost in the middle of that.