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Mojave OS. I have thousands of photos missing. I've noticed this since at least two major OS updates before Mojave.
Previous threads have directed me to click on Pictures in the Finder window. Naturally, that option has disappeared in Mojave.
Suggestions? Anyone?
Hi. Thank you for your response. I finally did find my Pictures within my Home on my iMac-Mojave. It was neither easy nor intuitive to find.
All of your data should be stored in your Home. That's where you should start looking for any of your documents, photos, etc.
Folders that come with your Mac - Apple Support
Get to know the Finder on your Mac - Apple Support
Were they in your Photos Library prior to enabling Photos in iCloud?
How did you determine they were not in your Photos Library in your backup?
Try restoring your Photos Library from your backup from a time when you think the photos were there. You can restore it to a different location like Downloads (that way it won't be uploaded to iCloud if you have Desktop & Documents enabled).
Open Photos while holding down the Option key and choose the newly restored Photos Library.
Hi. Thank you for your response. I finally did find my Pictures within my Home on my iMac-Mojave. It was neither easy nor intuitive to find.
All of your data should be stored in your Home. That's where you should start looking for any of your documents, photos, etc.
Folders that come with your Mac - Apple Support
Get to know the Finder on your Mac - Apple Support
Were they in your Photos Library prior to enabling Photos in iCloud?
How did you determine they were not in your Photos Library in your backup?
Try restoring your Photos Library from your backup from a time when you think the photos were there. You can restore it to a different location like Downloads (that way it won't be uploaded to iCloud if you have Desktop & Documents enabled).
Open Photos while holding down the Option key and choose the newly restored Photos Library.
No, the Pictures folder should still be in your home.
By, “Naturally, that option has disappeared in Mojave,” do you mean you don’t see the shortcut in your Sidebar?
If so, you can try opening your home folder and look in there.
Or, you can add it back in the Sidebar tab of Finder Preferences.
But all of this implies you used Photos or you stored your photos directly in Pictures folder. How and where were you storing them?
Hi. Thank you for your response. I finally did find my Pictures within my Home on my iMac-Mojave. It was neither easy nor intuitive to find.
Unfortunately for me, the pictures in the Pictures folder are exactly the same as they are in regular Photos library. It's like I didn't even live a life in 2003 or 2004.
Is there any other place on my iMac where these old but vanished pictures can be found? I do have Time Machine set up on an external hard drive, but the pictures haven't turned up there either.
Up until two days ago, I had been storing all my pictures on my iMac. Lately, I made a new selection to have all my pictures and videos stored on iCloud.
Thank you again for taking the time to answer. I followed steps similar to what you suggested.
I opened Time Machine and went to the earliest backup, November 2016. Lo and behold, there they were, all the thousands of missing pictures I’d been looking for.
Why did my iMac dump all of these pictures and bury them deep in Time Machine anyway?
I chose the RESTORE option at the bottom of the screen and my iMac is now feverishly restoring the “original” Photos Library, while holding on to the current Photos Library. The original photo library has about 53GB in pictures, and it’s going to take several minutes to restore all those pictures to my current Photos library.
Because I’ve chosen to keep both libraries, I realise I’ll have multiple copies of the same picture, and I’ll also be eating up a lot of space on my hard drive. I’m thinking that I can store all my photos on my iCloud account. Is that how it works now?
Thanks again for your help.
But now I’ve run into another apparent problem - now that all my old photos have been imported from the Photos Library in Time Machine, my iMac is now asking me if I want to “Switch Libraries.”
What happens if I SWITCH, and is this something I really want to do? All I want is to be able to restore all my previously “hidden-in-Time-Machine” pictures, to my current Photos Library.
Disregard question above regarding switching libraries. I found a thread in Apple Discussions about how to export photo files from a source library to a current library. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ll try it tomorrow morning.
It seems like you have this cleared up, now, but this statement seems to make me think you don't understand Time Machine.
Why did my iMac dump all of these pictures and bury them deep in Time Machine anyway?
It doesn't dump anything or bury anything in Time Machine.
Time Machine backs up your Mac trying to make an exact duplicate of your Mac.
At some point, something deleted those photos--I don't think we will ever figure that out. Time Machine maintained the backup of them, though. That's its purpose.
Where Are All My Missing Photos?
