photo library cannot by opened by second Mac, which is up to date

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Level 1

4 points

photo library cannot by opened by second Mac, which is up to date

I have a large photo library on an external drive. Last time I edited it, I was on a MacBook Pro, intel based, vintage 2019, running Sonoma 14.6.1 and Photos.app 9.0 (661.0.111). I wanted to work on the library using a MacBook Air M2 running Sonoma 14.4.1 and Photos.app 9.0 646.2.101.

There is no way for me to update the MacBook Air to the same version of the OS and/or Photos.app as the MacBook Pro, both are "up to date".

It seems to me that if I cannot update it, then its version of Photos.app should be able to use the version of the photo library created by the (slightly more recent) app. Is there solution?

Posted on Dec 10, 2024 10:13 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 10, 2024 11:04 AM in response to d_chabot

A Photos Library is a database, kind of like an Excel spreadsheet. With a new OS, things are added to the the database, like new columns on a spreadsheet, maybe rearranging the columns and rows, and there's no hope of going back. On the other hand, two Sonomas ought to be compatible, I think.

I am concerned about he external drive. And how is your drive formatted? To avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted. There have been so many problems with using incompatible drives that the newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open, since there is a chance of damaging the Photos database. See this:

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

What kind of error message do you get when you try to run Photos with the external Library? Does Photos work OK with its own Library? Is that on the internal drive?

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

201,853 points

Dec 10, 2024 12:50 PM in response to d_chabot

And that is the problem:

"On the M2 MacBook Air running Sonoma 14.4.1, I get the message that this library cannot be opened because it was created with a more recent version of Photos.app."

You simply have to upgrade the second Mac to a more recent version of Sonoma. Both your Macs should be able to install the most recent Sonoma security update, as they are already running Sonoma.

The only way to share a library between Macs with different system versions is to upload the library to iCloud. Each Mac can have a local ibrary compatible with its system version syncing with iCloud Photos.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

201,853 points

Dec 10, 2024 12:19 PM in response to d_chabot

The most recent version of macOS 14 Sonoma is version 14.7.1, neither of your Macs has the current version installed. The 14.7.1 is a security update, that should be installed for security reasons, see: About the security content of macOS Sonoma 14.7.1 - Apple Support

You may want to check, why you are not seeing an update notice. Perhaps your Macs are running out of storage.

Getting both Macs to the same system version would help to fix the problem, that you cannot share the Photos Library. To be able to share a library between two Macs the system version needs to be identical and the library should be stored on a volume where the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag has been enabled. How to set this flag has been described in the link posted by Richard.

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Answer 4

d_chabot Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 11, 2024 7:00 AM in response to d_chabot

OK, I now have both MacBooks running Sonoma 14.7.1 and I can open the photo library residing on my external SSD from both of them.

Still, there was a problem with Apple's updating procedure as both Macs were set to update automatically and were showing no upgrade available. I had to do a full reinstall of Sonoma, and I should not have needed to.

Thank you Léonie and Richard.

Denis

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Answer 5

d_chabot Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 10, 2024 12:19 PM in response to d_chabot

Hi Richard, thanks for your reply. You said it: 2 Macs running Sonoma should be able to open this library, or at least it should be possible to update the older copy of Photos so it can open the library.

The external drive is a 1 TB SSD formatted in APFS. It works fine with the older 2019 PowerBook Pro 15 in 2.4 GHz Core i5 running Sonoma 14.6.1. On the M2 MacBook Air running Sonoma 14.4.1, I get the message that this library cannot be opened because it was created with a more recent version of Photos.app.

The external drive has never been used for Time Machine backups.

I don't recall that the library was updated in a significant way when first opened on the older Mac. Until then, it worked fine with the MacBook Air. It is possible that the problem is a simple check for version number and, maybe, the library is indeed still compatible with the slightly older version of the Photos.app. But I don't know and it does not help me anyway.

Denis

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Answer 6

d_chabot Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 10, 2024 1:04 PM in response to léonie

Thank you Léonie, what stopped me before was that there was no option to update Sonoma, no message that it needed to be updated, on either of these Macs. But after reading you, I searched for Sonoma on the App Store, requested it, was asked if I really wanted to download it, to which I said yes. This is not an incremental upgrade, so it is huge, I am waiting for the download to complete on both machines. I hope it will solve my problem, but it is strange that an incremental upgrade was not offered to me.

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Answer 7

Dec 10, 2024 1:00 PM in response to léonie

léonie wrote:… You simply have to upgrade the second Mac to a more recent version of Sonoma.

I've been caught just making stuff up.

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photo library cannot by opened by second Mac, which is up to date

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