Photos displays "Closing the Library" for a loooong time when quitting

Don't bother. If you get the same closing issue again just do a force quit. I get the same thing on one of my libraries. It has some videos in it which might be contributing but I've not been able to pinpoint the real cause.

As far as I'm concerned, I have solved this for myself. After lots of looking and digging around, I discovered that there were 1200 files in the "recently deleted" trash can. I chose to "recover" all of them. Then I individually exported them to my hard drive, including the videos. And then I put everything in the trash can and emptied the trash can. Cool thing is that you can export with an option to use the original format, not just a chosen jpeg quality and also that you can select to export videos. The videos will even run within Photos and on my desktop without opening QuickTime to play them. Once everything was 100% deleted from the Photos app, it began working like a charm. I even uploaded an additional 600 photos and shut the whole thing down without any errors, hangs, or messages. I do believe I have the newest version, operating on El Capitan (my computer won't upgrade any further). Hope this helps someone else.

I wasn't doing anything to photos as I am not that photo literate. I simply went into photos to have a look at them and it was showing that message. That was a couple of weeks ago. It's still there so that is certainly a loooooong time. Should I leave the page open showing this message rather than shutting it down in disgust?

I understand that you were only looking, not modifying. However, on many occasions I was doing the same thing. The last time, I just opened Photos and then attempted to quit. It sat with the "Closing Libraries" message for 2 days. Yes, each time I had to choose "Force Quit". If you have to use force quit each time you want to quit an app, then something must be wrong. That's when I started investigating. I successfully used the recover procedure on both a desktop and a laptop computer. I have had zero problems since doing that, and I have been playing around with Photos quite a bit since the time I posted my successful fix. I'm not trying to be argumentative. I have searched the internet for a solution to this problem and have not found any other solution, so I was simply wanting to share my experience and had hopes it would help other people.

I have had this for two days now!
My brand new Mac is two days old and straight away the space bar is sticking and the 'Library is closing' sign has been up all this time, wont even let me shut down my Mac.
somebody help??

I had the same problem and I was taking much time out of my day reading many answers trying each one but all not working. on my laptop it said "closing the library"when I would click my photo icon. I left it for time with it just saying that but that did not wok then normally I don't like doing this but go up to the apple icon in the top left and go down to the force quit and click photos. That seemed to work. I hoped this helped.

Brand new iMac (3 weeks old) and I have to use force quit for photos every time. I am trying to put a photo book together and every time I have to use force quit all my editing disappears

Its driving me insane

I'm running 10.13.1 and recently experienced this problem. I waited about 30 min but the process did not finish. I got impatient, Force Quit the process and restarted the MacBook Pro. Photos started normally and has been running fine since. I'll chalk it up as an isolated glitch.

Hi!

My mom had the same problem the "Photos" app. She has a 21.5 inch, Mid 2010 iMac running OS X Yosemite version 10.10.3.

So I tried "Force Quitting" the Photos app by clicking "Force Quit," which is under the Apple Icon in the menu bar, highlighting the Photos app icon in the pop-up window and clicking the "Force Quit" button.

Once Photos was closed, I shut down the computer waited for a minute, then powered the computer back on. Now the Photos app seems to be working fine, including having updated the library with photos taken recently, even during the period when the Photos app was having the problem.

Let me know if this helps!

I had the same problem - force closed the Photos app - but that corrupted the library. Didn't want to start up again.

So I started Photos with Cmd+options wich brings up the "repair library" dialogue (well more of an OK button).

Repair took about 1hr (ca. 190 Gigs of Photos+Vids).

Now when closing it's stuck with "Closing the library".

I'll wait and see - hope this is a one time thing.

Ever since I moved all my photos from iPhoto to Photos, it's been taking hours to "Close the library..." when trying to shut down Photos or turn off my computer.

All of my photos appear to be brought it but I can't get into them until this process is finished. I've repeated this process and rebooted several times and I always get slow response. I do have 10 years' worth of photos on my hard drive so I'm wondering if this might be the issue.

so..I'm in the middle of being stuck on the "closing library" screen for several hours.

Should I just wait it out?

Then do I need to shut down & reboot?

hmmm...not impressed with Photos so far.