Live Photos videos persist in Photo Library even after manual deletion

Question

Live Photos videos persist in Photo Library even after manual deletion

Hi,

I am writing about a truly frustrating situation. I recently performed a cleanup of one of my Photo libraries, deleting unnecessary photos and, in particular, converting Live Photos into “normal” photos.

To transform one or more Live Photos into regular photos, I followed this procedure:

I selected one or more Live Photos and clicked on "Export Original";
I then deleted the exported Live Photos from the Photos app and emptied the Trash;
In the folder where I exported the original files, I selected ONLY the images (when exporting a Live Photo, there are always two files: an image and a video) and dragged them back into the Photos application. I then deleted the remaining videos in the folder (these are the 3-second videos that generate the Live Photo).

This procedure usually works perfectly (I’ve successfully used it on several Photo Libraries without any issues). Unfortunately, for one library, I discovered that the videos from the Live Photos still persist within the library itself.

The size of this Photo Library is about 260 GB. Using a simple script, I inspected the library's contents (via “Show Package Contents”) and discovered that of these 260 GB, approximately 60 GB consist of 3-second videos from Live Photos that I had technically already deleted from the app.

These videos are named like this: 2B0E47BC-960F-4663-ABC5-AB1XU6C2EC01_3.mov

I decided to use a script to delete all these videos and permanently clean up the library. However, even after cleaning in this way and performing a Repair Library operation (just to be sure), the information about the videos still seems to exist in connection with the original Live Photos. In fact, if I export one of these images as “Original” again, I encounter the following error:

“The export operation failed to create a file for the photo identified below:”

It is absurd that I now have over 60 GB of videos that I had already properly deleted. It’s also frustrating that, even after a Repair Library, these files remain stored in the library and in iCloud, taking up space unjustly.

How can I definitively resolve this issue?

Thank you in advance for your support.

Posted on Jan 28, 2025 9:14 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 28, 2025 11:03 PM in response to ciccionamente

In the folder where I exported the original files, I selected ONLY1. the images (when exporting a Live Photo, there are always two files: an image and a video) and dragged them back into the Photos application. I then deleted the remaining videos in the folder (these are the 3-second videos that generate the Live Photo).

I could not repeat that error if I carefully dragged or in the import dialog selected only the .jpg files and avoided .mov files. Maybe you inadvertently selected and imported also some .mov files in that step? You could have 1st in the Finder deleted all .mov files, and THEN imported just .jpg to prevent that.

> I decided to use a script to delete all these videos and permanently clean up the library.

Photos does not like that its contents are manually modified because its database gets out of sync.

I could reproduce your 2nd error if I by brute force opened the Photos library and deleted the .mov (Photos still though it was a Live Photo in its top left icon but of course it then refused to play) and then tried to export such .jpg. I got the same error as you.

The .jpg did export and it seems I could fix the situation by deleting that .jpg in Photos (and emptying Photos trash) and then importing the .jpg.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,735 points

Jan 29, 2025 1:26 AM in response to ciccionamente

I have noticed on the older system versions , that Photos has treated the video components of the Live Photo pairs as sidecar files and imported them together with the still frames, if they were present in the same folder, even if only the HEIC or JPEG files have been selected. Try to move the videos to a different folder, before you reimport the high resolution still frames again.

And make sure that the deleted Live Images have been removed from iCloud and all devices, also from the Recently Deleted folder.

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Answer 3

Jan 29, 2025 12:55 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Thanks for your help Matti.

Maybe you inadvertently selected and imported also some .mov files in that step? You could have 1st in the Finder deleted all .mov files, and THEN imported just .jpg to prevent that.

No .mov files have been imported at all. Consider that I exported thousands of files and in order to avoid the potential issue you just mentioned, I always sorted files in the export folder by Kind. In this way I only selected .jpg files - 100% sure about this.

I actually just realized that the issue doesn't happen with "recent" Live Photos on MacOS Sequoia. I can delete them easily with the procedure I mentioned. The issue is with "old" Live Photos that were coming from previous MacOS versions - in fact, the biggest clean up I did was with MacOS Monterey last year. I wonder if that's the root of the problem? Some bug on MacOS Monterey?

In a nutshell, my Photo library doesn't show the Live Photo section because, with macOS Monterey, all the previous Live Photos were exported as originals and reimported without videos. However, in the library system (and consequently iCloud), these 3-second videos are still there, and I have no way to delete them. At least if the Live Photo section were to appear again with macOS Sequoia, I could do the cleanup, and I'm sure it would work (as I said, it works with "recent" Live Photos).

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Answer 4

Jan 29, 2025 3:32 AM in response to léonie

Try to move the videos to a different folder, before you reimport the high resolution still frames again.

I deleted them directly after exporting the original images and these videos haven't been imported again for sure.

And make sure that the deleted Live Images have been removed from iCloud and all devices, also from the Recently Deleted folder.

I also did that. I deleted completely all the Live Images before importing back the still photos.

The issue is that I have the Photo library (and iCloud) still full of these 3-seconds videos and I don't have the Live Photos section anymore that would allow me to delete them correctly with the newest MacOS version. These videos are buried in the library and iCloud and if I delete them manually will cause an error that even the "Repair Library" function is not able to resolve at the moment.

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Live Photos videos persist in Photo Library even after manual deletion

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