Photos App Library disappearing.

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rededward Author

Level 1

8 points

Photos App Library disappearing.

After a standard restart I tried to access the photos app and received the following error message:

Photos cannot find the System Photos Library named "PhotosLibrary.photolibrary"

All of my photos on my iMac are gone, but still accessible on my iPad and iPhone.

Where did this library disappear to??

Can I restore my photos from iCloud? I can't seem to find an option to restore from iCloud. I'm beginning to wonder what good is the cloud if I can't restore something as important as a huge photo library.

My Mac is fully up-to-date. I tried the "repair library tool" to no avail. Disc repair also didn't work. I also restarted into safe mode and the photos library was still missing.

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 11.2

Posted on Apr 22, 2021 4:14 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

TonyCollinet

Level 7

23,873 points

Apr 22, 2021 4:18 PM in response to rededward

First, with photos closed, hold down the option key while starting photos. What libraries are listed?

Second - where is/was your library stored? On your system drive in the pictures folder? In some other folder? On an external drive?

If you need to resync your mac with iCloud, the easiest way is to create a new empty library, set it to be the system library (photos>preferences>general tab - while the new library is open) and enable iCloud photos (photos>preferences>icloud tab)

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Answer 2

rededward Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 23, 2021 5:01 AM in response to TonyCollinet

Thanks much Tony!!!

Your instructions worked.

After creating a new photo library, that I named identically to the old one, my photos were repopulated from the cloud and all is now well. It took a couple of hours for everything to fully sync but it was successful.

I'm still a bit curious as to why this happened, but I'm pleased there was a solution.

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Photos App Library disappearing.

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