diff --git a/mobile/lib/face/db.dart b/mobile/lib/face/db.dart
index e9e6079204..9b5f42f540 100644
--- a/mobile/lib/face/db.dart
+++ b/mobile/lib/face/db.dart
@@ -688,6 +688,20 @@ class FaceMLDataDB {
     return clusteredFiles / indexableFiles;
   }
 
+  Future<int> getUnclusteredFaceCount() async {
+    final db = await instance.asyncDB;
+    const String query = '''
+      SELECT f.$faceIDColumn
+      FROM $facesTable f
+      LEFT JOIN $faceClustersTable fc ON f.$faceIDColumn = fc.$fcFaceId
+      WHERE f.$faceScore > $kMinimumQualityFaceScore
+      AND f.$faceBlur > $kLaplacianHardThreshold
+      AND fc.$fcFaceId IS NULL
+    ''';
+    final List<Map<String, dynamic>> maps = await db.getAll(query);
+    return maps.length;
+  }
+
   Future<int> getBlurryFaceCount([
     int blurThreshold = kLaplacianHardThreshold,
   ]) async {
diff --git a/mobile/lib/services/machine_learning/face_ml/face_ml_service.dart b/mobile/lib/services/machine_learning/face_ml/face_ml_service.dart
index 932c7e39e1..a6b38f8e3b 100644
--- a/mobile/lib/services/machine_learning/face_ml/face_ml_service.dart
+++ b/mobile/lib/services/machine_learning/face_ml/face_ml_service.dart
@@ -98,6 +98,7 @@ class FaceMlService {
 
   final int _fileDownloadLimit = 5;
   final int _embeddingFetchLimit = 200;
+  final int _kForceClusteringFaceCount = 4000;
 
   Future<void> init({bool initializeImageMlIsolate = false}) async {
     if (LocalSettings.instance.isFaceIndexingEnabled == false) {
@@ -357,6 +358,15 @@ class FaceMlService {
     if (_cannotRunMLFunction()) return;
 
     await sync(forceSync: _shouldSyncPeople);
+
+    final int unclusteredFacesCount =
+        await FaceMLDataDB.instance.getUnclusteredFaceCount();
+    if (unclusteredFacesCount > _kForceClusteringFaceCount) {
+      _logger.info(
+        "There are $unclusteredFacesCount unclustered faces, doing clustering first",
+      );
+      await clusterAllImages();
+    }
     await indexAllImages();
     await clusterAllImages();
   }