Cant Open Photo Library

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Quit the Photos app. Hold down the Option key and open Photos. One of the photo libraries is already designated as YourLibraryName (System Photo Library). Choose the library you want to designate as the System Photo Library.

  • Run Photo Exifer, and click Photo Library, it will read all photos in photo Library. If it can't detect the photos, please go to product menu - Files - Open Photo Library. To open your photo library.
  • If you are trying to run Apple's first aid procedures to fix a photo library file that wasn't the one loaded the last time you launched iPhoto, or a library file that even the “first aid” part of the iPhoto application can't even seem to open (because it's so badly damaged), you may need to move on to a tool that will be more “powerful.

iCloud and the System Photo Library

You can use iCloud Photos, Shared Albums, and My Photo Stream only with the System Photo Library. If you choose a different library in Photos without designating it as the System Photo Library, the iCloud tab in Photos preferences is disabled.

If you want to use a different library with iCloud, follow the instructions in the next section to change the System Photo Library.

Cant Open Photo Library

How to designate a System Photo Library

If you designate a new library as the System Photo Library and then turn on iCloud Photos, the photos and videos in the new library will merge with those already in your iCloud Photos. Additionally, all photos and videos from iCloud will redownload to the device.

  1. Quit the Photos app.
  2. Hold down the Option key and open Photos. One of the photo libraries is already designated as YourLibraryName (System Photo Library).
  3. Choose the library you want to designate as the System Photo Library.
  4. After Photos opens the library, choose Photos > Preferences from the menu bar.
  5. Click the General tab.
  6. Click the Use as System Photo Library button.
    If Use as System Photo Library is grayed out, the current library is already set as your System Photo Library.

If you open a different library in the Photos app, and you haven't designated it as the System Photo Library, other applications will use photos from the original System Photo Library. Hold down the Option key when you open Photos to see which library is set as the System Photo Library.

Need help?

If you still have issues with Photos, contact Apple Support.

Martha Helena writes in with a problem that may have a few different angles. Her startup drive started to fill. Her Photos Library file is 12.5GB, and she had just a few gigabytes left on the drive. While she was able to copy an older iPhoto Library to the other drive, the Finder kept hanging up during the Photos Library transfer with this error:

The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “Photos Library” can’t be read or written. (Error code -36)

A decent number of people have received this error with an iPhoto or Photos Library, possibly because the media library folders are big folders full of other folders. This increases the odds that if you have a faulty file, it will scotch the copy. Because the library files are packages which look like files, the error gets reported for the package name, rather than revealing which file within the package is at fault.

You have a lot of possibilities to fix this. For starters, while this is an oddball one, some of the people who have had this failure have solved their copy operation holdup by fixing the destination drive’s format type.

Some external drives come preformatted for Windows in FAT32 format if they’re not listed as being specifically intended for Macs. Some iPhoto/Photos filename or related data may be incompatible with FAT32. (Some forum posts are from folks who thought it was in NTFS format, but Macs can only read, not write, to NTFS without additional software, so you wouldn’t be able to start copying at all.)

You can check whether you have a FAT32 partition on the external drive as follows:

Open

Macbook Air Can't Open Photo Library

  1. Launch Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
  2. Select the volume beneath the drive. The drive will be named something like Seagate, WD, or the like, followed by a model number. The volume appears indented named something else and, if mounted, with an Eject button next to it.
  3. In the main view, Disk Utility shows the volume’s name, and beneath it the capacity and then should read “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.
Cant Open Photo Library

If the volume shows FAT32, you need to reformat the drive. Make a complete backup of the volume, because erasing and reformatting a partition deletes all the stored data on it. Then and only then:

Us Open Photo

  1. In Disk Utility with that partition selected, click Erase.
  2. In the Format pop-up menu, change the item to “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.
  3. Click Erase and the confirm. This will delete everything on that partition.

When the volume mounts on the Desktop, if you can copy the media library successfully now, hurray, that was the problem.

If that doesn’t solve the problem, I have two more suggestions:

Macbook Air Can't Open Photo Library

  • Run Disk Repair from Recovery. Apple lets you boot from a special partition on your startup drive into the Recovery mode. Follow Apple’s instructions here, and then after restarting into macOS, try to copy the library. If that fails, then…
  • Rebuild the Photos Library using Apple’s instructions here. In Martha Helena’s case, that may require freeing up more than 3GB on the startup volume for temporary storage while it rebuilds. If that fails, then…

You can open the media library package and copy items in small groups to see if you can identify which file or folder is corrupt. Follow these steps:

  1. Launch Photos with the Option key down.
  2. Click Create New, and save the new files on the external drive.
  3. Quit Photos.
  4. Control-click on that new library file on the external drive and choose Show Package Contents.
  5. Select everything in the revealed folder, move to the trash, and delete it.
  6. On your startup volume, select an iPhoto or Photos Library and select Show Package Contents.
  7. First try copying everything to see if the Finder will report the problem: select everything in the folder, and drag to the new library’s folder.
  8. If nothing fails, great! If you receive an error, you should be able to see which folder it failed with. Grab all the folders except that one that didn’t copy and drag them to the new library folder. (Repeat with failures as necessary.)
  9. Open folders that failed to copy and try to copy elements within them until you diagnose which file is bad. If it’s an image file and not a database or other file, you may have to just do without it.
  10. When you’ve completed copying everything you can, launch Photos with the Option key held down.
  11. Select the library on the external drive.
  12. If it fails to open appropriately, try to rebuild it per instructions above.

This is a lot to try, but it’s likely one of these solutions will move you along your way to success.

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Cant Open Photo Library

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