Photos Library.photoslibrary in Trash

Do you have an external volume connected, where you may have trashed a copy of a Photos Library? Then you will be seeing a Photos Library in the Trash, whenever this volume is connected. You may try to put the library back from the Trash, so you can see, where it came from.

You may not be able to empty the Trash while the library is in use by Photos. Restart the Mac, then try to empty the Trash, before launching Photos.

I'm running out of ideas.

If you can ever find the culprit, let us know, please.

Photos is a part of the system and always available. Some third-party apps may be using it and launching it in the background by scripting it. They cannot use Photos however, without Photos creating a Photos Library and then trashing the library, when done.

If that should be the case, you may want to watch the Trash, so you can identify the culpit, that is using Photos in the background.

Have you taken the Photos Library out of the Trash and opened it in Photos? Looking at the photos inside might give you an idea, which app has been using Photos.

Hi rjackb,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We understand that you're having an issue with your Photos library (library.photoslibrary) appearing in Trash. We'd like to help get you pointed in the right direction for help with this.

Connecting to Apple Support would be the best next step for you. They will likely have updated information on how to get this issue resolved. Start that conversation here: Contact Apple Support

Hope that helps.

Take care!