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Photo Library won't open after Catalina upgrade

Just upgraded my MacBook Air mid-2012 to Catalina. Open Photos and it attempted to migrate the library (~36GB on internal drive). I soon get the error, An error occurred while migrating the photo library. And Please quit and relaunch Photos and try again. Tried to repair tool to no avail.


Any ideas?

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on Mar 27, 2020 4:27 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 28, 2020 12:13 AM

See the article https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205966

If you have trouble migrating an existing iPhoto or Aperture library to Photos

You might see an alert message when you first open Photos or migrate an existing iPhoto or Aperture library. Learn what to do if Photos can’t copy or create a library.

5 replies

Mar 28, 2020 2:05 AM in response to CH149

Do you have plenty of free storage? Photos will need some additional storage while upgrading the library.

Is your Photos Library an iCloud Photos Library or stored locally?


Sometimes it helps to repair the permissions of the Photos Library manually from the "File > Get Info" panel, before you can upgrade the library.

  • If you select the library in the Finder, ctrl-click it, select "Show Package Contents", you can set the permissions for all items in the window with the library contents individually to read & write for you.
  • For the folders in the package use the option "Apply to enclosed items".

Change only the permissions and nothing else.


A common problem with Photos after the upgrade to Catalina are incompatible media files in the library. Photos cannot handle any longer some video formats and image formats, that have been compatible with Photos 4 on Mojave. Did you check your library for image files and videos, that are incompatible with Catalina?


Mar 28, 2020 3:25 AM in response to léonie

Thanks for your feedback. Photos library is stored locally with plenty of space left on the Mac. Permissions seem to be fine. In regards to incompatible formats, I can't find of a list of compatible/incompatible formats. How would I go about searching the library as I can't open it in Photos?

Photo Library won't open after Catalina upgrade

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