Photos Library and iPhoto Library?

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Photos Library and iPhoto Library?

I purchased a new Mac and migrated my files over. In Users > MyUserName > Photos I found both a Photos Library and an iPhoto Library. Photos Library is 29.12 GB and iPhoto Library is 20.6 GB. I'm guessing that iPhoto Library is the older version of my current photo library, but I don't understand why the two libraries weren't merged. Obviously, I don't want to throw anything away until I resolve this and make sure they are ALL duplicates. How do I do this?

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 10, 2020 12:50 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Russ New Boy

Level 4

1,120 points

Dec 10, 2020 3:38 PM in response to Timothy Arends1

The libraries would not be merged. When you first opened the old iPhoto library in Photos, a duplicate library is created in the new Photos format. As Niel said, provided you didn't add any new photos to the old iPhoto library then all of the photos you had will now been the new Photos library.

However, I understand you want to be certain that you are not deleting any old photos. iPhoto will not run on Catalina, do you have an old Mac running a version of OS X pre Yosemite? You can try opening the iPhoto library in Photos but you will probably get the message that the library has already migrated.

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Answer 2

Niel

Level 10

727,775 points

Dec 10, 2020 12:58 PM in response to Timothy Arends1

If you didn't modify the iPhoto library after Photos imported it, it's a duplicate, but preserved in case you still want to use iPhoto.

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Photos Library and iPhoto Library?

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