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I moved my Photos library to Dropbox to liberate space on my laptop. Now I cannot access the photos from the Photo app. What can I do to resolve the problem?
MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS High Sierra (10.13.6), Photos app
I moved my Photos library to Dropbox
A Photos Library needs to be on a locally mounted drive. If you want to save storage on your Mac, move the library to an external USB drive. See Apple's instructions:
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Keeping the library in Dropbox will damage it sooner or later: Updating from iPhoto to Photos for macOS - Apple Support
If you store your Photos library in a location that's part of a cloud service (for example, Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive), your library might be damaged by the syncing process. As a result, you could lose photos.
To see your photos on all your devices, you can use iCloud Photo Library. To back up your library, you can use Time Machine.
If you do not want a drive connected to your MacBook Pro, then iCloud Photo Library with "Optimize Storage" is the only safe way to save storage for photos in Photos Library by moving the originals to the cloud. Do not put the library on a NAS either. (Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support)
To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.
I moved my Photos library to Dropbox
A Photos Library needs to be on a locally mounted drive. If you want to save storage on your Mac, move the library to an external USB drive. See Apple's instructions:
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Keeping the library in Dropbox will damage it sooner or later: Updating from iPhoto to Photos for macOS - Apple Support
To see your photos on all your devices, you can use iCloud Photo Library. To back up your library, you can use Time Machine.
If you do not want a drive connected to your MacBook Pro, then iCloud Photo Library with "Optimize Storage" is the only safe way to save storage for photos in Photos Library by moving the originals to the cloud. Do not put the library on a NAS either. (Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support)
To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.
Did you move the actual Photos library, or did you move the individual photos? Neither is likely to do what you want, but the recovery will be different. Either way, you will need to put your library/pictures back into the normal file system, then look for another solution to your space shortage.
If you really moved the whole Photos library, you may have done irreparable damage to it and should restore it from your backup (ideally a Time Machine backup).
If you only moved the pictures from the Photos library to Dropbox, you'll have to move the back into the Photos library before you can access them from the Photos app.
Sync Photos with Dropbox
