Rebuild of Photos app caused all photos to disappear!
I rebuilt my iMac's Photo app bc I could not delete photos but after rebuild, all photos are now gone!
iMac 27″, macOS 15.7
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WildBill wrote: I rebuilt my iMac's Photo app bc I could not delete photos but after rebuild, all photos are now gone!
It's not quite clear what you mean. The Photos app is a set of instructions on how to use the pictures and data stored in the Photos Library. The app doesn't get re-built, but we can repair the Photos Library by closing Photos and then option-command-clicking the app icon. Is that what you did? You can see this:
Basic Terms and Concepts About Photos
The most common way that people can see all their pictures disappear is that they are accidentally seeing the wrong, and empty, Library. Macs can have more than one Photos Library, so you may have switched Libraries. You can see what Libraries you have by using the Library Chooser. To do that, you close Photos and then option-click on the Photos icon. The Chooser looks like this:
You can see that I have several Photos Libraries. The System Library is the one that can be accessed by some other apps, like Safari, and it is the one that connects to iCloud if you've turned that on. If my guess is right, then you may be looking at a different Library while your pictures are in the System Library. The path to each selected Library is a the bottom. Your Libraries are usually found in your Pictures folder.
You can choose a Library to view here using the Chooser, or if you follow the path you can double click on any Library to open it in Photos.
Let us know how this goes and if you have more questions…
