Solution to "Error downloading slideshow photos" in Photos

TidBITS Talk
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I posted a message in Apple Support : In photos I’m getting the “Error downloading slideshow photos” even though I don’t keep any photos on iCloud.

However, I stumbled on a workaround myself and thought it might be useful to others:

I began by selecting a few images at a time and clicking on Slideshow, then I cut down the number until I found one that was causing a problem. Then I tried to find a copy on my computer to see if I could replace it. However I didn’t find one so that avenue was a dead end. Next, and I’m not sure why, I selected revert to original with the problem photo and lo and behold slideshow worked. So then I did undo revert to original and Slideshow still worked.

So as a final test I took a whole folder reverted to original and then undid revert to original and Slideshow worked.

Of course this doesn’t explain what the original problem was but hopefully this will help people with the same problem or perhaps Apple Dudes to improve the Photos App.

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The implication is that there’s something with the Versions database that might be causing this, not that the user can really do much with that beyond what you’ve already figured out. Thanks for letting us know the workaround!

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There’s More!

Prior to this stumble on fix I had this message under the People page 29521 Photos Scanned 902 Photos Remaining and this hadn’t moved for 2 months (Which was when I first noticed the message)

Since I started going through my folders in the method described, the number is going down and I’m now at 618 now. I have quite a number of folders to get through but I presume that number will go down to zero.

Who knows, perhaps the technique has fixed other hidden issues with Photos as I was also getting crashes.

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