How do I recover lost content after updating iMovie on Mac?

iMovie stores content in its iMovie Library.imovielibrary file.

Updating the app should not have caused it to lose the file however.

When iMovie cannot load the imovie library file for any reason it creates a new blank one.

Was your iMovie library stored on an external drive?

Or outside the usuall path in your User folder / movies?

Or somewhere the iMovie app cannot find it?

You can try quitting iMovie completely and then holding the option key when you open it again, and it should show a list of iMovie files it can find, you can choose one of them or click on Locate and navigate to wherever you may be storing your iMovie library.

If you know where your original iMovie Library was stored, navigate to it and double-click it to make it automatically open in iMovie.

I have the exact same issue: updated the Mac to OS 27.2, opened iMovie (library is ±130GB, I can see the projects when I choose "Show package contents") but get a blank projects screen.

Same happens after double clicking the library itself, which is on the internal drive in my Movies folder.

The user is now able to open iMovie (after correcting the permissions), but all of her movies have disappeared. When opening the library, only photos appear. Selecting Movies opens an empty folder.

So frustrating! No luck here.