In an age of Google email data mining, "phishing" scams, and sleazy social networks such as Facebook, one can never be too careful with personal data. And as Richard Snowden has proved to the world: just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean the NSA aren’t after you.
This brings us to a topic of a similar nature involving a "feature" added to Apple’s Mavericks iPhoto application: automatic facial recognition. I discovered this "feature" after I recently upgraded to OS X Mavericks, and created a bootable install image. Exploring new features, I was delighted to find most of the applications and OS features had improved — that is until I ran across facial recognition in iPhoto.
Besides the utility of slowing iPhoto to a crawl, facial recognition didn’t really seem to be that useful of a feature anyway, so I resolved to stop the facial scanning and eliminate the face repository. If this "improvement" to iPhoto bothers you as much as it does me, use the following steps to kick iPhoto’s creepy Big Brother off of your Mac OS X system.
First, be sure to Quit iPhoto if it is running. This is critically important, because we will be doing things that iPhoto will not like if left open. This includes removing all databases with scanned face information. So if you wish to stop facial recognition, but keep the facial recognition database, run only the first and very last command in the listing below.
Next, open Finder. Select the Pictures folder, and control-click iPhoto Library. Select the Open With option and choose Terminal.app.
NOTE: If Terminal.app does not appear in this list, it can be found in the Applications/Utilities folder.
Here is a screenshot of my Finder window in action:
With the Terminal window open, type these commands at each $ prompt:
$ defaults write com.apple.iPhoto PKFaceDetectionEnabled 0
$ cd ./Database/Faces/Detected
$ ls
$ rm *.apdetected
$ cd ../../apdb
$ ls
$ rm Faces.db
$ rm BigBlobs.apdb
$ exit
(The ls commands show the contents of each directory, so you may omit those.)
You may now open iPhoto again — this time it will not scan your personal photos for faces to insert into a database. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I am not associated or employed by any company producing software or hardware reviewed on this site.
Glasskeys
glasskeys.com 
rm *.apdetected – argument list too long!
use “ls | xargs rm” instead
By: Colin Mark on 06/18/2014
at 9:58 am
(Wow, a genuine non-spam comment.)
Colin, thanks for the feedback. I didn’t have an issue running rm *.appdetected on my box, but I will add your feedback to the piece in case others have the same issue you did. I appreciate your comment.
Kind regards,
Stephen
By: glasskeys on 06/18/2014
at 10:21 am
hi, it won’t work with older MacBooks
By: Anonymous on 07/24/2014
at 6:17 pm
Worked great for me
By: Anonymous on 09/10/2014
at 7:33 am
awesome tip – worked great for me. As above commented rm *.apdetected get error arguments too long (too many files) – I simply opened that directory in Finder and select all + delete
By: niels on 09/20/2014
at 10:40 am
Thanks Man !
By: Igor on 09/25/2014
at 1:57 pm
Thank you, worked great, I hated that feature!
By: Karen on 10/04/2014
at 10:29 pm
Now my iPhoto won’t open at all. It opened the first time after I made the changes but now freezes on the spinning wheel and won’t open, no matter how long it sits. The entire screen is stuck – can’t click on any other icons, programs, open windows, etc. I have to force shut down and restart without reopening any programs. Not sure what happened. :0( Very disappointed as I really really hate the Faces ‘feature’ I am using a mid-2009 MacBook Pro with iPhoto 9.5.1 and OSX 10.9.5.
By: Amy on 12/02/2014
at 12:25 am
Hi
My problem is I can’t open iPhoto with terminal.app
I can open the terminal app separately – will that work
Thanks from a very novice mac user
By: Roxie on 12/16/2014
at 5:22 am
Ok – now I can open it with the terminal.app but not allowing me to input :0/ I really am a novice lol
By: Roxie on 12/16/2014
at 5:25 am
Thank’s for this great help! I hated this face-recogniction and start to lose my trust in Apple, since they don’t give me a joice with iPhoto wether I want this to run or not. Makes me feel like Apple looks at me no longer as customer, but as “source of data”.
By: Anonymous on 01/15/2015
at 3:13 am
On MacBook Pro 13, OS X Yosemite works great!
Thanks much!
By: Anonymous on 02/02/2015
at 5:33 am
Worked a treat here too – thank you so much! This has become more and more annoying as my libraries built up.
Fixed it for good and all (I hope).
By: Andy on 02/19/2015
at 11:30 am
Thank you so much for publishing. I could list the Database/Faces/Detected directory, but all of the other requests were rejected! ;_(
Ex: rm: *.apdetected: No such file or directory
Alices-MacBook-Pro:iPhoto Library.photolibrary Alice$ cd ../../apdb
-bash: cd: ../../apdb: No such file or directory
More: rm: Faces.db: No such file or directory
Alices-MacBook-Pro:iPhoto Library.photolibrary Alice$ rm BigBlobs.apdb
rm: BigBlobs.apdb: No such file or directory
Arrrgh!!!
Nevertheless, I appreciated receiving the hope, reading posts like yours give me the hope that there is some autonomy left in this digital landscape. THX!
By: Anonymous on 04/09/2015
at 3:39 pm
Thank you so much. Worked on iPhoto ’11 (v 9.4.3 720.91) with Mountain Lion.
By: Anonymous on 05/23/2015
at 2:50 pm
Unfortunately, face recognition resumed shortly after. ;-(
By: Anonymous on 05/23/2015
at 2:54 pm
WORKED PERFECTLY! THANK YOU!
By: Christina on 11/18/2015
at 3:09 pm
So I just tried this and now FACES appears in “Events”!
By: Anonymous on 05/19/2017
at 11:31 am
NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES. Thank you @ Glasskeys
By: Anonymous on 01/16/2018
at 5:13 am