After MacOS Sonoma update, Photos app is unable to open my Photos Library because it's stored in iCloud Drive.

Just to be clear, prior to Sonoma, I never once thought about or knew where my photoslibrary file was. I didn't even know there was one. Then when I tried to launch Photos in Sonoma, I got the same error message as the OP. I hope these notes are useful:

1. I found my photos library file here: iCloud Drive/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary
2. I dragged it to the Macintosh HD/Users/<my name>/Pictures folder.
3. I opened Photos app--it opened and updated my library without me having to hunt for the file or take any other action.
4. For those of you worried about space on your local drive, it should not make any (negative) difference. It takes up the same 100 GB (in my case) on your local drive whether you have it in the iCloud Drive or not--because there's a local copy of the file anyway, so moving it is a net zero operation. There's a benefit, though: You'll get that 100GB (or whatever) back from your iCloud storage, because this one (giant) file will no longer need to take up room in the cloud.
5. For those of you worried about syncing your photos with your phone/tablet/whatever, that should also not be a problem. If you do the first 3 steps above, your photo library connection to the iCloud Photos service should still be intact and everything will still sync.
6. The reason for 4 and 5 is that this Photos Library.photoslibrary is just your local copy of all your photos. When you sync photos from the cloud, this is where they are stored so you can have quick access to them. There's still a separate copy of all your photos in the cloud (if you use iCloud Photos service).

I don't know whether Sonoma installation moved my Photos Library.photoslibrary file from my local Pictures drive to iCloud Drive/Pictures or whether it had always been in iCloud and Photos just hadn't complained about it before. The primary answer on this page, while technically accurate, is a bit insulting as it implies that customers who encounter this have done something wrong by moving the file to the iCloud Drive--that is not the case. And also, it doesn't provide instructions or the information needed to fix the situation that installing Sonoma caused (not the customer who installed it). I hope this post addresses this gap for folks.

The Photos Library must be available locally-- either on your Mac or on a properly formatted hard wired external drive. It cannot be on a network drive. This has always been true. In fact, you can't even move a Photos Library to the iCloud drive for a backup-- when I've tried that, it pretended to move it there, but really it was still stored on my computer.

The "iCloud Drive" is different from iCloud Photos, which is a syncing service. It stores your pictures and makes sure that your local Photos System Library has exactly the same pictures in it. And you can access them through iCloud.com. But to run the Photos app on a mac, it must use a local Library.

By selecting "Optimize Storage" in Photos Settings, you can save space by having Photos keep only smaller picture files on your computer as necessary -- it will automatically load full sized images to the Mac whenever you need to edit or print.

I wonder what you've tried in the past? For reference, you can check out these sources:

Apple Photos external drive

Optimize storage in Photos on Mac - Apple Support

Apple has warned against storing a photo library on iCloud Drive or in any cloud storage (Google Drive, DropBox, etc. ) right from the first release of Photos. A Photos Library is a package of linked files and databases, and the syncing can break these internal links. This warning has appeared in several Apple Support documents: 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 tested this with several small test libraries a few years ago. DropBox just needed half an hour to make mincemeat out of my test library. iCloud Drive needed a few days before I could no longer open the library. Then it has been damaged beyond repair. We had the same limitations with iPhoto Libraries and Aperture Libraries.

Instead Apple offers iCloud Photos Library, the only safe way to keep a Photos Library in iCloud. iCloud Photos has been designed to sync the library properly between different system versions and across different platforms.

And Apple has now made it impossible to move a library onto iCloud Drive to prevent us from putting our libraries at risk. If we move a Photos Library onto iCloud Drive, it will not be uploaded and no syncing will happen to protect it.

Athletic-Supporter wrote:

Hi Keith,

... I disagree with Richard.Taylor's statements "It cannot be on a network drive. This has always been true." Prior to the installation of Sonoma, my Mac synced with my iPhone just fine, and my photos were NOT resident on my hard drive. I only have a 500 TB hard drive, and I'm using about half of it. I keep most of my records on external hard drives that are backed up in triplicate. One in a fire safe AZ, one in a fire safe MN, and one copy that I keep with me. I'd love to hear a technical explanation of what happened when Sonoma was installed and why I can't set this up the way it was prior to Sonoma.

Even when you are using iCloud Photos you still need a local copy of your Photos Library. The local Photos Library does not need to be on the internal drive of your Mac. You can use an external drive, as long as it has a wired connection and a compatible file system format and has not been used for Time Machine backups or has system software installed. This is necessary, because the Photos.app has not been designed to work with a network database. As you probably know, the Photos Library is a package of your original image files, edited versions of the image files and database files, describing the the adjustments and relations between the images and the albums and folders. These internal items are linked, and the links can break, when the library is on a synced volume. And the network access can cause race conditions and dataloss, when working with the internal database files over a network. Database transactions need to be designed for network access by using synchronised transactions. Given Apple's warning, that remote access to the Photos Library is not supported, I can only infer, that Apple did not implement the the synchronisation for network access in Photos, because this can make the access slow. It has always been this way in Photos, and even in the predecessor iPhoto and Apple's flagship photo software Aperture.

The technical reasons in short:

• Cloud syncing of the library package can break the internal links, if not done by iCloud Photos.
• Accessing the library over the local network can cause race conditions and inconsistent database entries and data loss.
• if the library is on a volume used for Time Machine backups or has backup software installed, there will be problems with the file ownership.

I got this exact same error message the first time I opened Photos after the upgrade to Sonoma 14.0. I didn't know much about where the Photos Library was located, or supposed to be located, on my MacBook so I did some research. I believe the default location is on your Macintosh HD\Users\[YourUserName]\Pictures folder. For my experience, the Photos Library was moved from this location by the upgrade (not sure why). Then I searched via Finder for "Photos Library" and found that after the upgrade my Photos Library was moved to my iCloud Drive\Documents\Miscellaneous folder. It was there intact but on the iCloud Drive thus producing the error message when I opened Photos. All I had to do was to drag the Photos Library from the iCloud Drive location back to the Macintosh HD location where it was supposed to be. You get challenged by the move request ("are you sure") and also again when I re-opened Photos ("Photos doesn't have permission") but you just select the Photos Library and I was back in business again.

See page 3:

quote

Do the following:

1 - create a new library on a volume with enough free space to hold your full sized library.

2 - make it the System Photos Library.

3 - enable iCloud Library in Photos/iCloud settings pane.

4 - for all full sized original (instead of optimized) do not enable Optimize Mac Storage. If you don't have enough room on your laptop to hold the full sized library enable Optimize Mac Storage.

5 - with Photos open and in the background have patience and let the download of photos proceed. Deppding on the size of the library ti could take up to a week or more. Leave the laptop on (not sleeping) all night with Photos open and in the background.

Unquote

The technical explanation is that this is what Apple recommends for Photos Library Storage:

"Make sure that your external storage device, such as a USB drive or Thunderbolt drive, is formatted for Mac: either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

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."

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

And the iCloud Drive does not meet those requirements. It might have "worked*" before, But Apple has decided to enforce the rule that was already in place.

*Database corruption is not easily seen and may lurk for years before manifesting itself.

Do the following:

1 - create a new library on a volume with enough free space to hold your full sized library.

2 - make it the System Photos Library.

3 - enable iCloud Library in Photos/iCloud settings pane.

4 - for all full sized original (instead of optimized) do not enable Optimize Mac Storage. If you don't have enough room on your laptop to hold the full sized library enable Optimize Mac Storage.

5 - with Photos open and in the background have patience and let the download of photos proceed. Deppding on the size of the library ti could take up to a week or more. Leave the laptop on (not sleeping) all night with Photos open and in the background.

You can use an external drive, it just needs to be locally attached to the Mac.

It is iCloud Photos that lets you share with iOS devices, not using your iCloudDrive to store your library.

iOS devices have never had direct access to the library.

Athletic-Supporter wrote:

... My photos are on iCloud Photos, right where I want them. NOT taking up space on my hard drive. There is NO local copy. ...

The Photos.app needs a local library - this is where Photos is storing the albums, adjustments, all your work you are doing in Photos. And where it is temporarily downloading original image files to, when you want to work with a photo from iCloud Photos. And this library needs to be on a local drive. Photos will show you the location of the local copy of the library, when you open the Photos > Preferences > General. The location of the library is show at the top of the panel.

I'm OK with this, but what happened between Ventura and Sonoma?

What has happened is, that Apple has finally introduced a check, to ensure that the local copy of your Photos Library is in a supported location, before Photos will open the library, to avoid data loss. Probably too many users have ignored the warning in the support documents and put their photos at risk by keeping them in an unsupported location and blamed Apple, when they noticed years later that important photos or videos were missing.

Hello @marmeaux. I hope this helps.

For my step 1:

a. Open Finder

b. Look on the left side for "iCloud Drive" and click that. You should now see a list of folders and files to the right.

c. In the list of folders on the main (right-hand) section, look for Pictures and click that. You should now see a list of folders and/or files that are in the Pictures folder.

d. Look for a file called "Photos Library.photoslibrary". Depending on your settings, it might just show as "Photos Library".

e. If you see this file, you have successfully completed Step 1. This is where all your photos are stored locally.

Step 2:

a. Open another Finder window (from the Finder menu at the top of your screen, choose File and then New Finder Window)

b. In the left pane, look for "Pictures" under Favorites. If you don't have that, look for Macintosh HD, then choose "Users", then choose the folder with your account name, then look for "Pictures" under that.

c. The Pictures folder you found is where you want to move your photo library in the next few steps.

d. Position both Finder windows so that you can see the Photos Library file you found in step 1 and the Pictures folder of both on your screen at the same time. Resize them if necessary.

e. Move your cursor to the Photos Library and click on it once to select it. Then click and hold so you can drag it. Move your cursor a little to make sure it's getting dragged.

f. Drag the file over to the Pictures folder you found in the other window, and drop it into Pictures by releasing your mouse button (or raising your finger on the touchpad).

At this point, you'll get a warning about the file not being available on other devices. Don't be alarmed; this file is only local storage so you really don't want it in iCloud anyway.

Note: There are probably easier ways to do this, but this is the most explicit set of instructions I could think of that will work for everyone and doesn't require using terminal. If someone else has a better way, I'd love to hear it.

Athletic-Supporter wrote: Prior to the installation of Sonoma, my Mac synced with my iPhone just fine, and my photos were NOT resident on my hard drive.

As Keith Barkley (and I) have said, keeping a Photos Library on remote storage has always been unsupported. Apple has always said that this could result in corruption. Of course, since Apple didn't enforce this, many people came on this discussion forum wondering why Photos didn't work for them, and we had to quote Apple's documentation. And, of course, there were also people who were just lucky.

With Sonoma, Apple, apparently tired of all the complaints from folks who didn't read the warning, included a routine to ensure that the corruption wouldn't happen. That's where we are and why.

It will depend on your system version, what will happen, when the library is on iCloud Drive or in a Dropbox folder, or similar. Earlier system versions (up to macOS big Sur) did not give an error message and let us keep the library on iCloud Drive where it might get damaged. It is much safer now, with Photos preventing us from storing the library in a folder where the cloud syncing can break the internal links or the the database transactions will not be properly synchronized.

I am confused, since a phone can't access a Photos Library. Are you sure you are not confusing keeping a library on the iCloud drive (which has *never* been supported - even if it "worked") vs syncing with iCloud Photos?

Several months ago, when we were on Ventura and I first saw this "Photos Library on the iCloud drive" come up, I tried moving one of my Libraries to iCloud, and it seemed to work. But as, léonie pointed out, it was secretly hiding on my internal drive-- it only pretended to be working from the iCloud drive. I think that Keith and léonie may not be the ones confused.

In fact, my trial showed that it wasn't even working as a static cloud backup, because when I thought that I'd moved it to the iCloud drive, it wasn't really there, at all. I could get a copy of the package "TestLibrary.photoslibary" to iCloud drive only if I removed or replaced the ".photoslibrary" suffix, and then the library showed up as a folder. I could then copy the folder back, change the suffix back, and it would work with Photos. iCloud Drive really doesn't want the Photos library! I didn't try this, though, with a Library that was also syncing with iCloud Photos.