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Level 1

21 points

"What's new in Photos" being displayed on each launch

Each time I open Photos.app I get the launch screen "What's new in Photos".

I have a 265Gb Photos library sitting on an external Thunderbolt connected Lacie drive formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled), with "Ignore ownership on this volume" ticked and with the correct permissions and ownership.

Permissions have also been confirmed as per:

Resolve issues caused by changing the permissions of items in your home folder - Apple Support

I have tried all the suggestions on these forums including removing:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos

The com.apple.Photos.plist was also removed on subsequent attempts at closing and re-opening Photos.app with no change in behaviour:

rm ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Photos .plist

When I remove the directory: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos and restart Photos.app I get the splash screen and looking at the preferences in the app I see "Use as System Library" is greyed out meaning it is selected as the System Library. If I close and reopen I get the splash screen again but this time "Use as System Library" is not greyed out meaning the selection has not 'stuck'.

If I convert the binary plist (~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Photos.pl ist) to xml I can see the following has been set:

<key>IPXWhatsNewSerialNumber</key>

I assume this means it should not be showing me the splash screen again. I couldn't see anything in the plist about the System Library setting however.

This was working fine before High Sierra.

Software versions:

OSX - High Sierra 10.13.2

Photos - Version 3.0 (3251.12.190)

Posted on Dec 17, 2017 8:33 AM

Best reply

Old Toad

Level 10

207,733 points

Posted on Dec 17, 2017 8:53 AM

Open the library an go to Photo's General preference pane. There click on the button which says Use as System Photo Library. (If it's greyed out then the library is already the System Photo Library).

That should kill the New in Photos tour.

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24 replies

ilium78 Author

Level 1

21 points

Dec 22, 2017 3:40 PM in response to ilium78

One more observation. When I remove the container settings:

rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos

and restart Photos.app I get the "What's New...." screen but also get the "iCloud Photo Library" screen. When I close and re-open the app I see the "What's New...." screen again but the "iCloud Photo Library" is not displayed meaning there is something being written to a settings file successfully.

ilium78 Author

Level 1

21 points

Dec 22, 2017 3:48 PM in response to ilium78

OK - this is definitely a BUG in Photos.app.

If I double click the Photos library file on the external drive Photos.app opens up without the "What's New...." screen and the System Library setting is intact. If I open Photos.app from the icon on the launch bar I again get the "What's New...." screen. If I close and go back and double click the Photos library file on the external drive it all opens correctly.