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I recently updated my MacBook Air to OS Ventura 13.4.1. I am using Dropbox to backup all my files. When I tried to open my Photos app I received a message stating: "The library could not be opened. The Photos library is currently in Dropbox and has to be moved to a map on the computer before it can be opened."
How do I get access to my photos in the Photos app?
Before the update I had a backup pf all my photos in Dropbox, but the Photos app worked just fine.
MacBook Air 13″
A Photos Library must not be in any synced folder, like Dropbox, or on iCloud Drive, Google Drive or similar. The synching can break the internal links in the library and can result in losing Photos. A Photos Library needs to be on a locally mounted volume, not a volume shared on a local network. See: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
"You can't store your library on a storage device used for Time Machine backups. And to avoid possible data loss, don't store your library on a removable storage device like an SD card or USB flash drive, or on a device shared over your network or the internet, including over a cloud-based storage service."
I recommend to move the Photos Library out of the Dropbox to a supported external drive. Then try again, if you now can open the library in Photos. If you are lucky, the library has not yet become damaged by the syncing with Dropbox. If it still does not work and repairing the library does not help, you will have to restore a copy of the library from your backups. Do you still have a backup copy of the Photos Library, for example in a Time Machine backup?
A Photos Library must not be in any synced folder, like Dropbox, or on iCloud Drive, Google Drive or similar. The synching can break the internal links in the library and can result in losing Photos. A Photos Library needs to be on a locally mounted volume, not a volume shared on a local network. See: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
"You can't store your library on a storage device used for Time Machine backups. And to avoid possible data loss, don't store your library on a removable storage device like an SD card or USB flash drive, or on a device shared over your network or the internet, including over a cloud-based storage service."
I recommend to move the Photos Library out of the Dropbox to a supported external drive. Then try again, if you now can open the library in Photos. If you are lucky, the library has not yet become damaged by the syncing with Dropbox. If it still does not work and repairing the library does not help, you will have to restore a copy of the library from your backups. Do you still have a backup copy of the Photos Library, for example in a Time Machine backup?
Exactly as the message says: you cannot have the library there. It needs to be in your Pictures Folder or an an external drive formatted Mac OS X Extended, Journaled or apfs. That it worked for you before is fortunate. but that's just luck. Having the library in an inappropriate location is a recipe for dataloss.
When you launch Photos and it cannot access the Photos Library, because it is in an unsupported location, Photos will create a new, empty library in your Pictures folder.
I have no idea, why the local copy of your Photos Library got removed, but I stopped using Dropbox long ago, when it started nagging for access to my photos, which I did not want.
Try to find all Photos Libraries you are currently having on your Mac and compare the sizes and the creation dates.
Move the largest older library you can find to your Pictures folder and try to open this library in Photos by double-clicking it.
To use the Photos Library on your Time Machine backup you have to restore it using Time Machine to a local folder on your Mac or a different external drive. Photos cannot open Photo Libraries on a Time Machine volume.
See: Restore a library from Time Machine in Photos on Mac – Apple Support (UK)
To be clear, the Photos Library was also on my computer before the update, not just on Dropbox. I don't know why it suddenly disappeared from the computer.
I have tried to download some of my photos from Dropbox, because the whole library was to big. But then I still could't open the files in the Photos app for some reason. I also have an external hard drive as a Time Machinebackup, but when I tried to open the Photos app with the library on there it did not work either.
Sometimes when I open the Photos Library – there seem to be multiple different copies on my computer, I'm not sure why – it says instead that it is stored in iCloud Drive. However, I don't and never have used iCloud Drive to store my photos, and when I go to iCloud they are not there.
Apparently I have a Photos Library which seems to be "correct" according to it's creation date and size in a folder named Photos. None of it is in the Dropbox folder. is the the problem that my whole Mac is synced with Dropbox, so that all spaces of my computer are synced and therefore not compatible with the Photos app?
Also, since I have my whole Mac backuped on Dropbox, I'm no longer completely sure where to move the Photos Library for it to be "on my computer". It's currently located in a folder in Documents.
It seems to be this way. You need to move the Photos Library to a folder that is not being synced with any cloud service, if you want to use the Photos.app.
Yes, I guess so. And in some way change the settings in Dropbox, not giving it access to my whole computer. Thanks a lot for your answers, anyway. Hopefully I can solve it in some way.
Photos
