Upgraded to Mojave and now Photos app won't work

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Upgraded to Mojave and now Photos app won't work

I have over 65,000 photos in my iCloud Photo Library....and just upgraded my Mac Mini to Mojave. I have the settings set to save the photos in the cloud with just minimized images saved locally. Even so my hard drive on the Mac Mini began filling up years ago and so I moved my Photo app library to an external HD with plenty of room.

The first time I opened the Photo app after the upgrade to Mojave....it said it needed to update the photo library....which took forever. It never really got 100% done....it got to 99% and got stuck. After leaving it alone over night I finally had to reboot my Mac....since the Photo app was locked up and would not close. After booting up the Mac once more now the app won't even open. I get the following error message: "Photos must quit because the photo library has become unavailable or its data is corrupt."

I initially thought maybe the HD itself was corrupt or had crashed....but all the other files on it work fine. It's just the photo library file that appears to be damaged or corrupt. I tried the Disc Utility First Aid on that HD and it could not run it's diagnostic. It gave this error message: "First Aid could not unmount the volume for repair."

I checked my photos in my iCloud Photo Library using my MacBookPro....and they seem to be all present and accounted for....no problems there.
So....I don't think my photos are the problem so much as the Photo Library file itself being goofed up somehow on the HD.

How can I fix this?
Would it work if I were to delete that file? How do you recreate your Photo Library file?

Thanks in advance...

Dan

Mac mini, macOS Mojave (10.14), Intel Quad Core 2.3 GHz i7

Posted on Oct 7, 2018 11:04 AM

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Answer 1

jeremy_v

Community Specialist

Oct 8, 2018 3:50 PM in response to DrDanQ

Hello DrDanQ,

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities! I understand that the Photos app on your Mac will not open after upgrading to macOS Mojave. Using Disk Utility to run First Aid was a good step to help isolate possible causes for this error, and I would be happy to help with what to do next.

If you haven't already done so, try repairing your Photos library following the steps here:

Repair your library in Photos on Mac - Apple Support

To further isolate possible issues with the Photo library itself, see if you can create and open a new photo library on your Mac:

Create additional photo libraries in Photos on Mac - Apple Support

Keep us posted with the results.

Cheers!

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Answer 2

Nov 23, 2018 12:45 AM in response to jeremy_v

Same issue.

Tried to copy the photo library to another external hard drive (don't have 270GB on my existing hard drive) and icon shows the file CAN'T BE COPIED.

Only AFTER I had opened iphoto, updated the library, did I get a message to REPAIR. Once I said YES, the repair evidently CORRUPTED MY FILE and apparently I cannot access ANY OF MY PHOTOS.

Additionally, I saw that the external hard drive - if used for time-machine back-ups - could conflict. So I deleted that from my time machine, but yet time machine still appears on my external partitions.

Wow, I wonder if any of your genius's (the ones on phone support who told me how great it was to UPDATE/upgrade to MOJAVE) can be any more helpful.

Holding my breath for a better outcome.

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Answer 3

Nov 23, 2018 2:45 AM in response to MemoryPower

Right now, and before anything else, I would work to salvage the actual images, even if the library has become corrupted (as it seems).

It turns out that the images are stored in their original format inside the library, which is a "bundle" - basically a normal folder, with a special extension.

Control-click the Photos Library, choose "Show Package Contents".

Try dragging the "Originals" folder to another drive.

If that works, at least your photos are safe.

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Answer 4

Dec 12, 2018 3:00 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I have a similar problem after upgrading (that's questionable) to Mojave. When I open my photos, all I get is imports - the last from early November before I did the upgrade. It's as if there's nothing in photos except imports. There's no way to get to any other album.

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Answer 5

Nov 9, 2018 9:40 PM in response to jeremy_v

Tried making a new library, tried creating and repairing and no joy.

iPhone XS Max 12,1 to iMac Mojave 10.14.1

either says no photos or shows grey squares

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Upgraded to Mojave and now Photos app won't work

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