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Photos not appearing in Mail

Hi,


I have a Macbook 15" mid 2010, 4gb memory and 1TB crucial SSD. There are 8,506 photos on the hard drive (as counted by Photos) and I use the Photos app to view them. I use Mail for all my emails.


When I compose a new email and I want to attach a photo I would click attach > media > photos and from there you can select whatever photo you want. The problem is that I can see that a lot of the photos are not shown, yet they appear in the Photos app. If I click on the "show or hide photo browser" button in Mail then I get the same results and the photo count shows as 5,506. The photo count in Photos still shows 8,506. The photos that are not showing seem to be random, regardless of when they were taken. For example, several photos I took 2 weeks ago are missing, yet a test photo I took today showed up.


I've noticed a similar thing in eBay. When I want to add photos taken on my iPhone to a listing (that have already been sent to iCloud and have downloaded successfully to Photos) it takes ages for them to load up into the photo browser, I'm sure it would take hours if I left it long enough.


Does anyone else have this problem and has found out what is going on? Would rebuilding the library help? I regularly use Onyx to help keep the machine running well but this has not helped with this particular issue.


Have just noticed while typing this that if I try and attach a photo using the "image insertion" button, I get the same missing photos in the browser, so doesn't seem like this issue is confined to something in the Mail app.


Any help appreciated!

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.13

Posted on Apr 15, 2019 9:35 AM

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Question marked as Apple recommended

Are you using iCloud Photos? Are the photos stored in iCloud and not locally on your Mac? Then you need to view the photos enlarged in Photos to force a download from iCloud. Otherwise they may not appear in the Photo browser.


Another possible problem - is the library you are currently using with Photos enabled as your system photo library? Check the Photos > Preferences > General. "Use as System Photo Library" should be grayed out. If it is not, you may be seeing a completely different Photos Library in Mail and other applications in the Media Browser. After clicking "Use as System Photo Library restart Photos and all other applications that are using the Media Browser,


Posted on Apr 15, 2019 10:35 AM

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3 replies
Question marked as Apple recommended

Apr 15, 2019 10:35 AM in response to terencetheturtle

Are you using iCloud Photos? Are the photos stored in iCloud and not locally on your Mac? Then you need to view the photos enlarged in Photos to force a download from iCloud. Otherwise they may not appear in the Photo browser.


Another possible problem - is the library you are currently using with Photos enabled as your system photo library? Check the Photos > Preferences > General. "Use as System Photo Library" should be grayed out. If it is not, you may be seeing a completely different Photos Library in Mail and other applications in the Media Browser. After clicking "Use as System Photo Library restart Photos and all other applications that are using the Media Browser,


Apr 15, 2019 11:28 AM in response to léonie

All the photos on my Mac are stored locally, the iCloud reference was just to say that when I take a photo using my iPhone it automatically uploads to iCloud and then downloads locally to my Mac just as it should do and that all seems to be working normally. Also the Photos app is displaying "Updated Just Now" which I assume means it has downloaded all available new photos from iCloud to the local hard drive?


Have checked the "Use as System Photo Library" button and it is indeed grayed out.

Apr 15, 2019 11:45 AM in response to terencetheturtle

terencetheturtle wrote:
Also the Photos app is displaying "Updated Just Now" which I assume means it has downloaded all available new photos from iCloud to the local hard drive?

It means that Photos has synchronized the local library with iCloud.But it does not mean, that all photos have already been downloaded in the full resolution.

Is the Photos > Preferences : iCloud: Download Originals to this Mac enabled?

And do you have enough free storage on your Mac to download all photos?




Photos not appearing in Mail

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