Mac Photos stuck on "Restoring... 0%" after Time Machine restore
Solution 1:
I solved this with the following steps:
- Restart in Safe Mode (Shift key held down).
- Attached an external drive containing a clone I’d made the same day as the Time Machine backup. I don’t remember if this clone was made with Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner, as I have both.
- Copied the Photos Library from the external drive to the internal drive. I made this copy with the ditto command in the Terminal.
- Disconnected the external drive
- Launched Photos, and verified the photos (in low-resolution) were present.
- In Photos, set that just-copied Photos Library to be Primary.
- Reboot normally
- Waited about five minutes for all startup routines to complete
- Launched Photos and enabled iCloud Photos
- Verified I could access high-resolution versions of the photos (confirming iCloud connectivity).
- Waited overnight for photos newer than the clone date to appear, which they did.