Under catalina, Photos app, v 5.0 (121.17.170) does not show the "Photos" tab under "Library".
P.S. I so much regret that iPhote does not run on Catalina. I wonder how many years it will take for Photos to arrive to the maturity of iPhoto.
MacBook, macOS 10.15
I managed to reproduce the problem on my 2017 macBook pro. As soon as I boot the Mac into Safe Mode, the Photos item vanishes from the sidebar. Safe boot mode disables the advanced features of the graphics card (Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support). So, either your graphics card does not have the advanced features, or your Mac has accidentally been booting into Safe Mode. This could happen, if you turn on Blue Tooth devices, while starting up the Mac.
Thank you for posting this. The Preferences panes are indeed different. On your Mac mini, where the "Photos" item is missing, the "My Photo Stream" item is missing in the preferences. This should only happen, if you are using a new AppleID on this Mac. Are you using a different AppleID on the Mini?
Also the "Autoplay Videos" item is missing. It looks like the Photos 4 preferences panel in Mojave.
Have you tested in a different user account, if you are getting the same results, when you use a clean new user account for testing? How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac - Apple Support
Sometimes missing items in the graphical user interface are caused by corrupted preferences files. If the problem vanishes in another user account, it may help to trash the user preferences.
I just tested - when I change the language for Photos to Dutch, My Photo Steam is also missing from the iCloud Preferences on my MacBook Pro 13", ut the Photos item is there in the sidebar.
This is an apparent problem for several users who have also posted about it. It may be related to the type of Mac, don't know. So far no-one has found a fix.
As a test launch Photos with the Option key held down and create a new, test library. Import some photos and test to see if the same problem persists. Does it? (This tells us if the problem is limited to your current library or is more wide spread)
Next log into another user account and see if the problem persists there in Photos. (This tells us if the problem is limited to your user account or is system wide).
How did you do the clean install? Which installer did you use?
The only way to get a complete new install of the system is to wipe the drive completely, not just the system partition, and to restore the system from internet recovery (How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery – Apple Support), to get a complete fresh copy of MacOS X.
And then test the Photos.app, before you reinstall any other applications or restore your user home folder.
But it may be a problem of the mac model. Whenever I am seeing a post about "Photos" missing from the sidebar, the mac model is a Mac Mini. Here is another one: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250883814
We should start a collection of the affected mac models and compare the processor types.
Even your View Menu and the keyboard shortcuts are shifted.
For me, the menu starts with Photos ^1, not Memories ^1.
Is your primary system language set to English US or a different version of English?
The library is stored under /users/shared so that other account on the Mac have access to it. The permissions are adjusted.
This will not work with Photos for Mac. A shared folder does not suffice to share a Photos Library among users. You will have to move the library to a different volume or at least a different partition, where you can enable the "Ignore Ownership on this volume" flag.
What kind of differences are you seeing in the Preferences? Could you post a screenshot?
Thank for taking the time to write to me.
Some background info:
Tests according to your instructions:
We are trying to diagnose the problem, having Photos as a black box.
Therefore, I suggest that a developer from the Apple team can examine the programming logic that defines if a menu item is shown or not. The cause of the problem should be obvious to them. So I suggest to spare a little time and relief us from this bug.
thanks !
I did not find this issue reported, so I opened this ticket.
Would you mind adding here the links to the other reports of this problem?
Maybe one of them advances and I would like to see the solution.
If I create a group with the users who need to have access to the Photos library and give ownership to the group, do you think, this would bypass the permissions problem?
Btw, I am deleting some 100's of photos when reviewing the photos, and every deletion takes 3 seconds until the next photo appears. I do not know if this could be relevant.
If I create a group with the users who need to have access to the Photos library and give ownership to the group, do you think, this would bypass the permissions problem?
It is a good idea, but the group does not solve the problem. You need to give the permissions recursively to all subfolders of the Photos Library, over and over again, as soon as a user modifies the library. And a user will write to the library, as soon as the user opens it. This can only be avoided by moving the library to a separate volume or partition, where the ignore ownership flag is enabled.
You could add a second volume to your system drive and move the Photos Library to this volume.
I have the same problem. On my MacBook Pro it shows the tab. But on my MacMini it doesn't. Both machines are on Catalina, and both show version number: Versie 5.0 (121.17.170). Still if I look at preferences, the follow up screens are slightly different. And I feel that in the beginnen when using my MacMini all was well. I quite often look at my photo's and suddenly I found I could not get to the tab on my MacMini anymore.
In addition to this, I feel that this problem just occurred. I have been using Foto's (as it is called in the Netherlands) on this MacMini quite often the last month, after I installed Catalina, and haven't noticed this omission. Until - say - three days ago. I'm quite sure this problem developed, and was not there from the beginning.
I just tested you suggestion by making a new user, with no Apple ID. Nothing's changed. But, I have been thinking, that perhaps I - not so long ago - changed this MacMini from English to Dutch. I will change it back again to see what happens. The MacMini and al my other systems al all on the same Apple ID.
Dear Mioan, I don’t completely get what you mean. Are you advising to do a complete reinstall or not? Anyhow, I will do a reinstall. I’ll keep you guys posted how it went. By the way, this will not be this weekend, as I am away a few days. Keep up the good work, perhaps already a solution presents itself.
Is there any news on the subject? I have this and other problems since updating to Catalina, which by the way I thoroughly regret, because I can't use Photos - and I used it quite a lot.
I too have a Mac mini in use. :(
Photos app, v 5.0 (121.17.170) does not show the "Photos" tab under "Library"
