I am on Big Sur. I noticed that several pictures in the Library are showing unknown reference. Probably I deleted them from the hard drive but they are still in the Photos Library.
How do I delete these pictures with missing referenced files? In previous versions of Photos there was an option to create smart albums for pictures with missing referenced files, but now this option is not available anymore.
iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.0
Are all your photos referenced or only some of them?
If you try to export multiple images at once (from a smart album: Photo is referenced), you will get an error message, if the selection includes files with broken references. The filename will be shown in the error message. You could use this as a test to find the broken references.
The smart album rule to find missing referenced files did not just vanish in Photos 6 on Big Sur. It is also not available in Photos 5 and Photos 4, I just checked again. I have used it frequently in Aperture, but do not remember any Photos version that had this rule.
What part of creating a Smart Album with criterion ("Photo" "is" "referenced") isn't working for you in Photos 6.0? I can create such a Smart Album in Photos 6.0. (It doesn't show anything, because I truly have no referenced photos in my library.)
Only some of my pictures are referenced.
Unfortunately, the possibility to create a smart album "Photo is referenced" is no longer possible in the latest version of Photos (6.0, Big Sur).
The filename shown in the error message has helped me to find a few broken references, but not all of them.
Do you use iCloud photos? If so what happens if you use a smart album to find pictures that can't upload to iCloud?
As an alternative - do these images show an info panel, or does that fail?
If it does, can you search based on data in the info panel - which will presumably have strange values in.
Yes, I use iCloud photos, but I have only three pictures that can't upload to iCloud - these are different from the pictures with missing references files
The info panel tells me about the file name of the individual missing referenced files, but as I said these are files that I have deleted in my hard drive.
I was not able to find the attribute "referenced" because it is wrongly translated in Italian - this is the language setting in my Mac. The current italian translation is "selezionata" which means "selected", hence it is misleading. This solved my question, event though I wonder how to flag this issue to Apple.
Many thanks to all for your help!
You should let Apple know about the incorrect translation through their formal Feedback process.
Remove pictures with missing referenced files
