Photos App photos, but not syncing tags

Let it be known. I have had my M1 Mac for a few years now, so no one should tell me "give it more time."

Back in 2017, Apple announced the ability to sync tagged faces between macOS and iOS. (macOS 10.13 with iOS 17). Until then, for privacy reasons, Apple had kept facial recognition on-device only.

Years have passed since then. It is astonishing that this is STILL an issue.

The Photos app on the Mac is just so inept. Everything is synced properly, same number on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and iCloud website. So the issue is not syncing the photos themselves.

I have thousands of pictures of family members. When I search for a name on my iPhone, I get plenty of results. I get the same number on my M1 iPad Pro (8,235 both on iPhone and iPad). But my Mac shows a quarter of that number. (reviewing more photos doesn't bring anything up.)

It is also incapable of looking up texts in photos. On my iPhone and my iPad, I can type 'passport' and easily find half a dozen photos of my passport(s). (even my iPhone XS Max from ages ago could easily bring up a picture of driver's license or passport when I searched.) On a much newer, more powerful Mac, however, that same search yields no result. Both my Mac and iPad Pro have the same M1 chip!!!!! That's the annoying part. And I have had my iPad not for too long, but everything is already synced properly. But my Mac is just annoyingly incapable of working as it was promised to work.

The point of syncing the tagged faces across devices via iCloud was to eliminate the need to do this on every device separately. That was promised 7 years ago. So the excuse of "it takes time," or "each device has its own algorithm," etc. is not acceptable.

I have even gone through "repair library" as a desperate measure.

So if anyone has a tip or explanation, I'm all ears.

So far, nothing I have read anywhere has provided a reasonable answer.

Thanks guys

R