How to recover deleted Photos albums (NOT photos)

Question

How to recover deleted Photos albums (NOT photos)

I was trying to delete an empty album, and somehow must have deleted a folder of about 40 albums - whatever I did, Photos suddenly quit, and on reopening it, while the photos (probably several thousand) are still there, the folder and the albums in the folder have all disappeared. Is there any way to recover the folder and the albums within it? Otherwise I have a huge amount of work to restructure all the photos in their correct albums.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 15.5

Posted on Jul 19, 2025 06:18 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Richard.Taylor

Level 6

16,011 points

Jul 20, 2025 06:47 AM in response to Anthony Glaser

Oddly, I did the same thing two days ago-- deleted a folder when I intended to delete an empty one! Pretty depressing, at first, but I restored from Time Machine, and all is back to normal!

Do you need help with Time Machine?

Restore your Mac from a backup - Apple Support

To restore a Photos Library, you need to use TM's Restore function-- dragging the Library directly from the Time Machine files doesn't work.

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Answer 2

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,576 points

Jul 19, 2025 11:56 PM in response to Anthony Glaser

Do you have a recent back up of the Library? That's the only way.

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Answer 3

Jul 20, 2025 07:21 AM in response to Anthony Glaser

I have a little one ounce 4TB SSD (Crucial) that I carry with my MacBook. Since I'm using a laptop, I don't keep it plugged in as I would with a desktop Mac, but I'll usually plug it in once or twice a day, even when traveling. Not often, but in a few very important cases, it has been a life saver. I also have a mechanical drive at home with Time Machine that I use less often as further backup, since I'm still learning not to overly trust hard drives.

Since the backups are each incremental, the Library "file" you see in the TM drive isn't complete. It takes the TM software to put all the pieces back together.

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Answer 4

Jul 20, 2025 06:54 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

Thanks Richard. I do have a Time Machine backup - unfortunately as I am travelling and away from home I can't seem to access it (I will have to check and see if there is a way to access it remotely, but I don't think there is), and I have taken several hundred photos since the last backup. I will look at the link - in the past I have not had much luck in restoring from Time Machine backups.

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Answer 5

Jul 20, 2025 07:04 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thanks.

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