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akora/disable-iPhoto-face-recognition.sh

Last active March 12, 2026 06:50
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Disable iPhoto's face recognition on Mac OS X Yosemite. Run from command line.
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disable-iPhoto-face-recognition.sh
defaults write com.apple.iPhoto PKFaceDetectionEnabled 0
# then right click your PhotoLibrary in Finder (in your Pictures folder) and remove the following files:
# Faces.db (in Pictures/iPhoto Library/Database/apdb)
# Faces folder (in Pictures/iPhoto Library/Database)
@jayf0x

jayf0x commented Mar 7, 2026

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Any updates on this?

@akora

akora commented Mar 11, 2026

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Hi there,
Did a bit of a research, unfortunately, nothing came up that could be useful. The command still works on Tahoe, at least it did not return any errors, but I cannot confirm that it actually does the thing it's supposed to do.

@jayf0x

jayf0x commented Mar 11, 2026

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Thanks for taking the time. Yeah indd, I came to a similar conclusion. Can unload photoanalysisd but I'm unsure if this prevents facial stuff as it's hard to verify.

launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u) /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.photoanalysisd.plist
launchctl disable gui/$(id -u)/com.apple.photoanalysisd

ps aux | grep photoanalysisd

I don't use Photos.app all together, but maybe this helps someone

@akora

akora commented Mar 12, 2026

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Thanks a lot for sharing, awesome!

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