How To Open The Photos Library On Mac

Photos in your System Photo Library are available in apps like iMovie, Pages, and Keynote. You can also sync them to iOS devices and view them on Apple TV. And if you want to use your own images as your desktop picture or screen saver, the images need to be in your System Photo Library before you can select them in System Preferences.

How to search your music library in macOS Catalina’s Music app Three buttons let you choose among collections to search, but Your Library should be one of them. Itunes.

If you have only one photo library, then it's the System Photo Library. Otherwise, the first photo library that you create or open in Photos will become the System Photo Library. If you have more than one library, you might need to designate a System Photo Library, so other apps can access the photos and videos you want them to use.

  1. Nov 23, 2016  Moving a Mac’s Photos Library. Next, go to your Mac’s Home folder and open the Pictures folder. Drag the PhotosLibrary.photoslibrary file to the new drive’s desktop icon (or onto its.
  2. Jan 12, 2020 With either the desktop or a Finder window as the frontmost application, hold down the Option key and select the Go menu. The Library folder will appear as one of the items in the Go menu. Select Library, and a Finder window will open showing the contents of the Library folder.

Follow these steps to designate a System Photo Library:

Mar 29, 2019 Click Library. It's in the middle of the drop-down menu under the 'Home' option. Doing so will open the Library folder in the Finder window. Once you close the Finder window in which the Library folder is open, you can let go of the ⌥ Option key.

  1. Quit Photos.
  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 you open a second or 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.

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 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. If you want to keep the contents of your photo libraries separate, don’t turn on iCloud Photos for more than one library in Photos.

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Photos User Guide

Even if you use iCloud Photos, it’s important that you always back up your library locally using one of the following methods:

How To Open The Photos Library On Mac Free

Photos
  • Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. If you ever lose the files in your Photos library, you can restore them from the Time Machine backup. For more information about setting up Time Machine, see Back up your files with Time Machine.

    WARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup.

  • Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.

If you have more than one photo library, be sure to back them all up.

How To Open The Photos Library On Mac Download

Important: If any of your image files are stored outside your photo library, those files (known as referenced files) aren’t backed up when you back up your library. Be sure to back up those files separately. To make it easier to back up all your image files at once, you can consolidate referenced files into your library. See Change where Photos stores your files.

How To Open Photo Library File On Mac

See alsoCreate additional photo libraries in Photos on MacRepair your library in Photos on Mac