Corrupted local Photos library

Question

Corrupted local Photos library

My local photos library got corrupted. Fortunately, I use iCloud to sync all of my photos across my desktop, laptop, iPad, and iPhone. So while I currently can't open the library to see my photos on my desktop, I can still see everything on all other devices. This is a drag because my desktop library had all of the original files (it became quite a large library at almost 400 GB).

Question: If I create a new (blank) photos library (holding option while opening Photos) and set it as the system library and set it to download originals... Will it do just that, download a copy of everything (thus creating a new copy/version of the corrupted library?

Thanks,

Andy

Posted on Jan 22, 2022 11:57 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,065 points

Jan 22, 2022 12:16 PM in response to andrewfromridgewood

That should work, Andy. I have several times repaired my Photos library by downloading it again from iCloud to a new, empty library, by making the new library the System Photos Library and enabling iCloud Photos.

The are two drawbacks:

All projects will be missing, because the projects are not saved to iCloud.
And some of the named faces may be missing. The manually added faces circles do not reliably sync back from iCloud. I had to name some faces again.

On the plus side - it is much faster than restoring the library from Time Machine and uploading it again to iCloud.

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Answer 2

Jan 22, 2022 3:44 PM in response to léonie

Thanks for the quick reply and confirmation! I've got a time-machine recovery in process, but you're right this will take a long time. In my case, the progress bar says about 2 days. I'm going to see if that works first so that I can maintain the faces and projects. If it doesn't work, then the backup plan is to start with a new empty library.

Thank you again!

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Corrupted local Photos library

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