Disadvantages of a Referenced Library in Photos - Updated for macOS 10.15 Catalina

by: léonie

Last modified: Apr 29, 2020 7:18 AM

18 4865 Last modified Apr 29, 2020 7:18 AM

Photos for Mac has two modes of importing photos, managed (the default) and referenced. This is determined by the Photos > Preference > General > Importing. If you disable "Copy items into the Photos Library", Photos will not store copies in its library but reference the photos in their original location. That can help to save storage by keeping the original photos on an external drive. See these Help pages:

Aperture users migrating to Photos might be tempted to set up a referenced Library in Photos, since referenced libraries worked well in Aperture.

Unfortunately, the support for referenced photos is still poor in Photos. It is a little better than in iPhoto, but still cannot be recommended in Photos for several reasons: These readons aplly to all versions of Photos:

There is no tool to relocate the originals to a different drive, if you need to move them to a drive with more storage or you need to replace the drive, because it is failing.
If you delete referenced photos from the library, you cannot delete the original as well automatically. It will be left behind and you have to track it down individually or have to consolidate the photos into the library before deleting them.
Worst of all, there is no versatile tool to reconnect the referenced original files to the versions in the Photos Library, if Photos has lost the connection. Reconnecting will be necessary, if you restore your referenced photos from a backup or if there are permission issues. Photos will just complain about a missing file and ask you to search for it, without any information about the missing file. You are not told the
And if you want to use iCloud Photo Library you cannot use referenced files, because they are not supported in iCloud Photo Library.

In Photos 5 on Catalina a referenced library is even more problematic.

Photos imported as referenced are not shown on the Places Maps: Problem in Photos 5.0: Referenced Photos do not show in the Places Album - Apple Community - the map will be empty.
A mixed Library with referenced and managed photos seems to be preventing the upload to iCloud
Reconnecting the referenced files will give random results. See: Photos 5 on macOS 10.15.4 Catalina does not reconnect referenced files fully after moving the originals to a different folder
Here is a test:
- I created a small test library with a few referenced photos. Then moved the folder with the referenced imaged to the second internal volume. Now the badges on the thumbnails have been showing a broken arrow:
- Clicking the broken arrow brought up the "Locate Referenced File" dialog. I pointed Photos to the new location of the folder and the referenced files have been reconnected. The first time has been easy - when moving to a different volume and not renaming the folder.
But when I repeated the experiment - I renamed the folder and moved it to a different folder on the same volume, I could no longer manage the referenced files at all.
- Now clicking the broken arrow does not allow to reconnect the originals. The command is unresponsive.
- The command "Show referenced file in Finder" is shown as active in the File menu, but unresponsive.
- Even with the broken arrows badge as an overlay on the thumbnails I can edit and share the referenced files. Also the command "File > Consolidate" is working.
- It seems to be impossible to reconnect to renamed or moved referenced originals correctly. The reconnection will be incomplete. Photos cannot reveal the file and the broken badge remains. All we can do at that point will be to consolidate the referenced files.

Before using a referenced library with Photos 5 on Catalina I recommend to wait for a bugfix, and to test this feature with a small test library.

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