went from a iMac to MacBook Pro and just want to be able to see older photos from the external drive when needed. Also, my wife would also like to use same external drive to look at the photos from her MacBook Pro, is this possible?
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 14.5
One more thing in addition to Mark's excellent advice - if two users want to share one or more Photos Libraries on an external drive, it is essential to set the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag. When you open a Photos Library, even just for reading, the file ownership of some items in the library will change. Photos needs write permission, even when it only wants to open the library for browsing the library.
Prepare the external drive exactly as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
The file system format should be APFS or MacOS Extended (Journaled), you will need a wired connection (do not even think of using a NAS), and the external drive must not be the same drive you are using for Time Machine backups.
One more thing in addition to Mark's excellent advice - if two users want to share one or more Photos Libraries on an external drive, it is essential to set the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag. When you open a Photos Library, even just for reading, the file ownership of some items in the library will change. Photos needs write permission, even when it only wants to open the library for browsing the library.
Prepare the external drive exactly as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
The file system format should be APFS or MacOS Extended (Journaled), you will need a wired connection (do not even think of using a NAS), and the external drive must not be the same drive you are using for Time Machine backups.
That depends on how you backed up the photos to the external drive.
If you exported them to Finder folders, any Mac should be able to browse them.
If you copied the Photos library to the external drive, you could open that library on another Mac if it is running exactly the same version of Photos, but older versions would not be able to read it, and newer versions would update it to their version.
If the external drive is a Time Machine drive, you restore using Time Machine, then use the restored files of library as above.
If you used some other backup method, some other answer may apply.
Thank you and i will do what you have suggested.
Thank you so much and will try gour suggestion!
once I have backed up photos to an external drive, can I view them from other Macs?
