Level 1

17 points

How did my photos turn into .exe files on a Mac, and how can I fix this?

I have/had over 50K photos and due to various reasons, over the years, I thought I had lost a lot of them. However, yesterday, while running a clean-up program (I never let the computer delete anything without checking it out first), I found hundreds of missing photos. Problem - they are all listed as Unix Executable Files. Now my research tells me that EXE files are windows-based. I have only ever used Mac for my photos.

Question 1: How did all these photos turn to the dark side and become EXE?

Question 2: How do I get them back / open them / save to photos?

As always, thank ya'll for your assistance.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Photos converted to EXE files

Mac mini, macOS 15.5

Posted on Jul 5, 2025 1:41 AM

Top-ranking reply

Kurt Lang

Level 9

69,378 points

Posted on Jul 5, 2025 9:24 AM

I presume you mean they have this desktop icon:

If so, then no, you're pictures have not been converted to anything. They're still the same as they were before.

As mentioned by others, you did yourself no favors having CreamMyMac on your computer. What may have happened is these photos never had a file extension (anything from OS 9 and earlier) and CMM stripped the resource fork, or just plain hosed it. Without a file extension or Type & Creator codes, the OS has nothing to go by to figure out what the file is. So it gets a generic exec icon. Which is the same thing Windows does when it assigns a file an icon of a dog-eared piece of paper with the Windows logo in the middle. Both mean the same thing - "I don't know what this is."

Yer_Man has noted the solution:

Simply adding 'jpg to each will probably fix the problem, assuming they were jpgs to begin with.

You'll have to experiment. Try adding .jpg to a file and then opening it. If it's not a JPEG, the image editing app will give you an error message. If it does, try a different extension, such as .tif . You'll know what file format you normally used, so try the most likely one first.

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24 replies

Ltlmrs Author

Level 1

17 points

Jul 6, 2025 2:42 AM in response to Yer_Man

I appreciate all the good suggestions. But, here's another conundrum.

Putting aside the exe files (or maybe not, I don't know), many of my photos can't be imported into Photos, for "unknown reasons."

You will see they all have jpeg/jpg extensions AND I am able to open the photos in Preview or my Movavi Photo Editor. I have tried renaming them in Movavi with the appropriate extension, but I still get the same error.

Here is the Info on one of the photos, if it is of any help.

(The photo was taken in Texas in the 60's. I am the teen on the right, next to my mom, with her three brothers, one sister, assorted in-laws, and my younger brother front left. Dad, of course, is taking the picture.)

Jul 6, 2025 3:49 AM in response to Ltlmrs

Ltlmrs wrote:

Putting aside the exe files (or maybe not, I don't know), many of my photos can't be imported into Photos, for "unknown reasons."

You will see they all have jpeg/jpg extensions AND I ** able to open the photos in Preview or my Movavi Photo Editor. I have tried renaming them in Movavi with the appropriate extension, but I still get the same error.

Did you manually add .jpeg suffix and are you sure it is not using another codec that is incompatible with Photos.app?

What does Preview.app Command-I report as the Document type which might not correspond to the extension like in the example below?

Ltlmrs Author

Level 1

17 points

Jul 7, 2025 12:22 AM in response to Yer_Man

Ok, let's move on from don't use cleaners. It's gone. What I need are solutions to putting these pictures back into Photos.

So, what I have is the same problem presenting in different ways. When attempting to import into Photos, they all fail. "Cannot import - Unknown Error"

1) IMG_0434.jpeg EXE file

2) Dog on Beach EXE file

3) 0005D9FF-11D7-4028-92F4-B464E586D75A.jpeg EXE file

4) IMG_2568.jpeg JPEG Image

Note: All files with extensions already had the extensions. I did not add them.

Note: Some files in any of the above categories have photo thumbprints and some have blank or EXE thumbprints.

Note: Adding .jpeg to a file will change a blank thumbprint to a photo thumbprint.

Note: All files with extensions can be opened in Preview. However, they cannot be imported/saved to Photos.

I just really need to get these into Photos. They encompass 45 years of married life with daughter, growing up years, and ancestral pictures.

As always, I appreciate all your suggestions; however please note that I am not a developer, so plain English works best for my understanding.

Ltlmrs Author

Level 1

17 points

Jul 7, 2025 1:11 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

I think my nod to Yer_Man was erased from my last post (my error).

Yes, I have tried opening in Preview, saving in Preview, then trying to import into photos. Doesn’t work.

I have added extensions to files that are missing them, then saving, but they won’t import.

I shall look into all the suggestions and maybe one will do the trick.

Thanks a bunch.

Ltlmrs Author

Level 1

17 points

Jul 8, 2025 3:29 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

Richard, I thought I answered this last night, but I can't find that post. Anyway:

Yes, I have file>exported = nothing.

I have only been adding jpeg to the photos that are missing extensions.

Is there a difference in the way that TIFF, HEIC, JPEG/JPG, and PNG work?

Would some be better than others in helping resolve this issue?

Jul 8, 2025 3:46 AM in response to Ltlmrs

Ltlmrs wrote:

Richard, I thought I answered this last night, but I can't find that post. Anyway:

Yes, I have file>exported = nothing.

I have only been adding jpeg to the photos that are missing extensions.

Is there a difference in the way that TIFF, HEIC, JPEG/JPG, and PNG work?

Would some be better than others in helping resolve this issue?

Those are all different formats. If you have a photo encoded using one of those formats, and you try to interpret the data as if it were encoded in another format, the data will appear to be garbage.

TIFF is a container format that can contain images in various formats, but a TIFF file would still appear to be garbage to an application that blindly tried to interpret it as some other sort of file.

Changing a file's extension, alone, would not change its format, unless there was some sort of special-casing to treat a renaming request as a (renaming + file format conversion) request. So you don't want a JPEG file to have the .TIFF extension, or vice versa. Maybe an application would be clever enough to look at the first few bytes of your file and figure out the mismatch, but more likely, you'd simply get complaints that the file was corrupt.

If the file was actually good, but just had the wrong extension, fixing the extension might salvage the file.

Ltlmrs Author

Level 1

17 points

Jul 8, 2025 8:35 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

Weird - I agree. But, I am the master of weird technology. If something unheard of is going to happen - it's gonna happen to me. It's never boring.

GraphicCoverter was mentioned previously. I am going to give that a try.

Kurt Lang

Level 9

69,378 points

Jul 8, 2025 1:04 PM in response to Servant of Cats

macOS uses an icon of a dog-eared piece of paper, too.

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that was the only way the OS shows unknown file types. Excellent breakdown, too, of how the OS tries to determine what is what.

Apple also slowly deprecates things, as I'm sure you know. There used to be a basic icon for OS 9 and earlier suitcase TrueType fonts. But they now display with the exec icon. The Kind column still correctly indicates them as a TrueType font.

Type 1 Postscript fonts have gotten more changes. The icons are now just a blank, dog-eared piece of paper. The font data is still correctly identified as PostScript Type 1 LWFN Font in the Kind column, but the suitcase of bitmapped screen fonts, which used to be correctly indicated as a Suitcase Font (or something similar) is now listed as TrueType® font. Which is completely wrong.

Jul 7, 2025 12:48 PM in response to Ltlmrs

Did you miss Yer_Man's suggestion? If you have a picture that will load in Preview, then save it as a jpg or your preferred format, and see if Photos will import it, then.

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How did my photos turn into .exe files on a Mac, and how can I fix this?