Contacts finds duplicate users looking for faces, when I don't see them in Photos app

[Howard Brazee]

When I go to add or change a face in my Contacts application on Catalina, I go to photos/People, and see that two people have their names duplicated, with different photos of that person for each duplicate. There are 101 people in that menu.

So I open Photos, select People, and look to see if it shows duplicate people that need to be merged. There are 97 faces in Photos, without any duplicates.

What causes this discrepancy?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hi,

If you have duplicates in your Contacts application, they may have been added in different way - manually by you, added from Mail or another app, etc.

I would try viewing your contacts on iCloud.com and edit/remove and duplicates there. That way, you will know iCloud is correct, and that should sync down to all devices using your iCloud account.

C

 

[Howard Brazee]

I apologize for not being clear. I am looking at a particular contact, and wanting to add or change a photo. I want to select a photo from my Mac's photos library. I do so, selecting "people". Going down on the list of people, I find two duplicate names (my son and his youngest son). Looking at the photos of those names, I see that they *are* photos of the people, but not the same photos. So I opened the Photos app. I opened "people", got rid of hearts, and sorted all of the faces in alphabetic order to verify that they weren't duplicates. There aren't.

Here's a separate problem which may be related:
Just now, I went to Finder on Catalina with my iPad plugged in. My iPad synced with "Sync Photos to your device from 'Photos'", which is what I want. After the sync finished, I opened Photos on my iPad. The iPad asked me if I wanted to use the iCloud, no I tried that in the past, I want to sync with my Mac. This has 65 people, including 3 people with hearts and some that were deleted from my Mac. My Mac has 97 people. I started looking at my "people" photos, then backed out for a moment. When I went back in, I saw a message saying "29,715 Photos Scanned To finish scanning your remaining 1,601 photos, lock your iPad and connect it to power." Hmm, it was locked and connected to power all night! My son's face is missing. I did combine 3 "faces" of my grandson. I will lock my iPad shortly.

 

[Cory Cooper]

No worries...I understand now. Thanks for the clarification.

Not sure why that is happening, as I don't use that feature myself. As far as the iPad sync - that could add duplicates, if you aren't using iCloud Photo Library to sync between devices. That is also a feature that I do not use personally. It is my understanding that an iOS device has to be unlocked to allow syncing when connected to a Mac, not locked?

I guess I am more of a manual sync user - I like to do things when I want, not automatically. I do sync Safari bookmarks, contacts, and calendars via iCloud though.

C

 

[Howard Brazee]

I have the iCloud photos syncing turned off. I want my Mac's photos to be the master.

But I don't think that is why my contacts app thinks there are two matches in my photos library for my son and also for my grandson, when I don't see them in my photos app.