Photos has attempted to repair the library ''Photos Library.photoslibrary'', but is unable to open it.

Thank you!! Even through it's a year later (and a bit of a different situation) this 'solve' still works.

My hard drive failed, and I was able to restore all data from my Time Capsule...that's the good news . Unfortunately Photos flat refused to open the restored library - which was the bad news. I tried everything I could think of and nothing worked. Finally I stumbled across your solution. I tried the fix as you outlined and...it works! I can not thank you enough as even though I have iCloud backups and offline backups of all images (and backups of those backups) I was not relishing recreating all of my folders in Photos, etc. You rock!!

What gets destroyed?

This has restored my library, although it wanted to repair the wrong one.

To get it to repair the broken one, I had to click Photos.app with just "option" down,

and then "control option" after selecting the library that needed repair.

It seems OK now. I am curious what might be gone. Thumbnails?

Photos is a very fragile app, and the error message is not helpful or informative.

**** you Apple for not providing the sysadmin repair option along with the crappy error message.

Mmm like you say it works though is quite destructive. I have managed to find another way just by trying things out really.

Go to your Pictures folder, create a temp folder and put your Photo Library in there, then start the Photos app and when it's prompts; create new library, then shut the Photo.app.
Go back into the Pictures folder right click on the new created 'Photo Library' and 'Show Packet Contents', then open the 'database' folder and copy the 'DataModelVersion.plist', then drag your original Photo Library out of the Temp folder you created placing it back into the Pictures folder.

Now following the steps above go into your original Photo Library and replace the 'DataModelVersion.plist' with the one you have copied, then right click on your original Photo Library and open with Photo.app, and everything should be working fine..!

This was what solved my issues, hope this works for you..?

"What gets destroyed?"

My solution was also a reply to mprenfro repair option, that although may of worked, would of lost you lots of information including all edits, metadata updates, etc.. Doing it the way I suggest does not.!

Also the reason why it tried to repair the wrong one was because there were obviously more than one one Photo Library file in the same location. The only Photo Library you want in the Pictures Folder is the one you want to use and that you have modified the 'DataModelVersion.plist'.. For more info on this please refer to "Helpful" answer on this discussion..!

I have managed to find another way just by trying things out really, that won't lose any date

Go to your Pictures folder, create a temp folder and put your Photo Library in there, then start the Photos app and when it's prompts; create new library, then shut the Photo.app.
Go back into the Pictures folder right click on the new created 'Photo Library' and 'Show Packet Contents', then open the 'database' folder and copy the 'DataModelVersion.plist', then delete the newly created Photo Library and drag your original Photo Library out of the Temp folder you created placing it back into the Pictures folder.

Now following the steps above go into your original Photo Library and replace the 'DataModelVersion.plist' with the one you have copied, then right click on your original Photo Library and open with Photo.app, and everything should be working fine..!

This was what solved my issues, hope this works for you..?

Holy crap that worked!! Had a library i pulled from a time machine back up and put onto an external drive. Library is ~300gb, photos kept failing to repair. I did the above and like magic all good.... can't thank you enough!!

I converted my iPhoto library, then copied the Photos library to an external drive. It worked fine for me but for a non-admin user, the same message appeared that you got. What worked for me was to open Photos from that non-admin account while holding both the Option and Command keys. I then got prompted to enter an admin username and password in order to repair the library. Seems to be OK now.

I also had the exact message even after successfully repairing it once with the command + option button opening the Photos library. Now it no longer repairs successfully, and will not open?

I had my library on an external SSD prior to the Photos app upgrade. The upgrade itself went very smoothly and the library worked well for some time, then it started giving warning messages that it couldn't be opened? I repaired it once, and had it working for several weeks just fine. Then suddenly, again, it couldn't be opened, and also is not successfully repairing itself?

i just got that message also after a restore from time machine onto a new macbook pro. tried another restore from previous weeks but same message

I had the same problem but this was caused by different version of Photos. I bought the new MBP 3-weeks before migrating my data from the old one. I updated the old one from Mountain Lion (possibly Mavericks, can't remember now) before thinking this would ease the migration.

Turned out there'd been an update to Yosemite in that three week period. As a result the Photos library created on the old machine was done under Photos v1.0.1. whereas the out-the-box brand new machine was running 1.0.0. Nothing on the update prompt for Yosemite indicated that Photos was also being upgraded so I never even thought about that as the problem.

I'd moved the various libraries around, renamed and deleted (after making sure I have copies elsewhere) but given the library was 77Gb is took some time and on a very slow internat connection the upgrade from 10.10.3 to 10.10.5 took 4 hours but I eventually had the same version of Photos on both machines and the migrated "broken" library instantly opened up cleanly.

Took 2 days to realise this was the problem, so worth checking before you embark on other solutions - might save some time.

Drag the library out of the Photos folder to desktop. Press option key down and click on go in menu bar. When you hold down the option key, your library will be visible. Open Library. This is your local user library. Go to preferences and locate the file associated with photos and trash it. There should only be one. Go to Relaunch Photos. When given a the option, create new library. Almost there. The magic is coming... Right click or option click the library you dragged out of the Pictures folder. The one that did not worked and you were ready freak because all of your treasured photos were on there..... See where it says "open package"? Open it. Inside should be a folder called Masters. Your pictures should all be inside there safe and sound. You should not probably anything other than the Masters. Hope this helped...

mprenfro wrote:

Drag the library out of the Photos folder to desktop. Press option key down and click on go in menu bar. When you hold down the option key, your library will be visible. Open Library. This is your local user library. Go to preferences and locate the file associated with photos and trash it. There should only be one. Go to Relaunch Photos. When given a the option, create new library. Almost there. The magic is coming... Right click or option click the library you dragged out of the Pictures folder. The one that did not worked and you were ready freak because all of your treasured photos were on there..... See where it says "open package"? Open it. Inside should be a folder called Masters. Your pictures should all be inside there safe and sound. You should not probably anything other than the Masters. Hope this helped...

You should note that this is absolutely the last resort as you lose lots of information including all edits, metadata updates, etc and since you are creating a new library if you are using iCloud Photo Library you will have to upload everything again

Very seldom is it necessary to do a destructive process like this - having a good backup is a much better idea

LN