I moved Photos.library to iCloud Drive on my MacBook Air about 2 years ago (??). Now that I upgraded to Tahoe 26 I get the message "Library cannot be opened. “Photos Library.photoslibrary” needs to be moved to a folder on your Mac to open."
How do I move it and where does it belong?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 26.2
The Photos Library can be in a number of places, but where it can't be is in the iCloud Drive folder or any networked type location. It also can't work on an improperly formatted external drive-- it has to be on a drive formatted in APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, like your internal drive is.
The normal place to keep the Photos Library is in the Pictures folder in your Home folder-- Users / [you] /Pictures.
There should be no problem with just dragging the Photos Library from the iCloud Drive folder to the Pictuers folder.
Let us know how it all works out…
The Photos Library can be in a number of places, but where it can't be is in the iCloud Drive folder or any networked type location. It also can't work on an improperly formatted external drive-- it has to be on a drive formatted in APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, like your internal drive is.
The normal place to keep the Photos Library is in the Pictures folder in your Home folder-- Users / [you] /Pictures.
There should be no problem with just dragging the Photos Library from the iCloud Drive folder to the Pictuers folder.
Let us know how it all works out…
Move Photos.library to correct place
