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lost photos after time machine back up

I cannot see all my photos in Photos archive after I backed up my time machine.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.12

Posted on Sep 20, 2020 8:55 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 21, 2020 6:43 AM

Have you been using iCloud Photos with "Optimise Storage" enabled? Then Time Machine will only have backed up a subset of your photos and you need to enable iCloud Photos again to restore the missing photos from iCloud.


5 replies

Sep 21, 2020 11:17 AM in response to gizemkm18

Did you have more than one Photos Library? You may want to check, if Photos has opened the correct library after you restored your Mac from the backup. You can see, which librar Photos is using by looking at the Photos > Preferences > General > Library Location.


To switch between Photos Libraries quit Photos, then hold down the options key ⌥ while launching Photos again. Release the options key ⌥ when the library chooser dialog appears and select all libraries in turn.


lost photos after time machine back up

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