I have photos from an old Mac desktop that I recently put on a hard drive and tried opening on a new MacBook. It says I cannot open the photos because the photos are from version Photos5.0 which is not supported by my new MacBook. I was unable to update to a newer photos version on the desktop because it is so slow from previous software updates due to being too old of a model to support the updates. How can I access these photos?
The photos app comes with MacOS - you cannot transfer the app from an older version.
Are you trying to transfer your photos from the old Mac? If so you need to copy the library, not the app. It is normally stored in the pictures folder and is called "photos library.photoslibrary"
Once you have transferred the old library, you can open it with the new photos app on your new mac, and the library will be converted to run with that version.
The photos app comes with MacOS - you cannot transfer the app from an older version.
Are you trying to transfer your photos from the old Mac? If so you need to copy the library, not the app. It is normally stored in the pictures folder and is called "photos library.photoslibrary"
Once you have transferred the old library, you can open it with the new photos app on your new mac, and the library will be converted to run with that version.
Which system version is installed on your "new" MacBook?
Photos 5 is the version coming with macOS 10.15 Catalina. Any Mac with macOS 10.15 Catalina installed or a newer system version should be able to open a Photos Library from macOS 10.15 Catalina, but not a Mac with macOS 10.14 Mojave or older.
I expect a new Mac to have a newer system version than Catalina, unless you purchased some older model. Make sure, you launch the Photos.app that came installed on the new Mac in the Applications folder, not some alias to the old Photos from your old Mac, that you transferred, when you set the new Mac up.
Perfect, that fixed it. Thank you!!
Trouble Opening an Older Version of Photos on a New MacBook
