Photos won’t import into non-System Libraries on macOS Sequoia

Keeping each trip in its own library on a thumb drive

Apple don't regard thumb drives as appropriate for a Photos Library:

And to avoid possible data loss, don't store your library on a removable storage device, such as an SD card or USB flash drive, or on a device shared over your network or the internet, including over a cloud-based storage service.

That's from here:

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support (SG)

I'm not sure why Apple give this advice, but it may be because they don't regard these items as robust enough for the job. (Interestingly, Adobe don't recommend them for LRC Libraries either). So what may be happening is that there is creeping silent corruption of these libraries and/or Photos is now more robust about checking that the library is in an appropriate location. This has certainly been the case in recent years with Libraries on other forms of inappropriate locations.

sungyle wrote:

👉 My questions:

* Is anyone else experiencing this same behavior?

* Is this a new limitation by design, or is it a bug introduced in Sequoia?

* Are there any known workarounds?

External drives work just fine. I have my System Library on my internal drive, but I have other Library that run on external drives. No problem. There is no limitation due to the OS.

It looks like you know that drives must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format for Photos Libraries to be run on them. As Yer_Man mentions, Flash Drives are slow and unreliable. There are good, fast, small, portable SSDs for less than $80/TB.

Do you have a "non-system" library on your internal drive? Does it work there?

There is something special about your setup. To narrow things down, try these steps:

• Restart the computer (of course)
• Re-start in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes, and it often helps. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this: 

          Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support 

• Make a new user and see if the same problem recurs with it. This is a bit harder, because a new user can't access a different user's stuff. You would need to move your Library out of your own user's folder up to the general "Users" folder.
• Rebuild your Photos Library--close Photos and re-launch by option-command-clicking the app icon. If this is a System Library with iCloud Photos, it’s possible that repair will cause a re-sync that lasts long enough to make you nervous.

The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.

Let us know what happens…

Where exactly are the non-system libraries on your internal drives?

Are they in a subfolder of your user home folder, for example in the Pictures folder? Photos does not work with with libraries outside of your home folder. Some folders are problematic.

• For example, when I put a library in the folder /Users/Shared, I am encountering problems with the file ownership.
• if your Mac is syncing with iCloud Drive, make sure that the libraries are not in folder syncing with iCloud Drive, for example the Desktop or the Documents folder.

The best place would be your Pictures folder.

léonie wrote:…For example, when I put a library in the folder /Users/Shared, I am encountering problems with the file ownership.

Me, too. And /Users/me/Public seems iffy, as well. For sharing between users, I've been depending on the Users folder, itself.

Thank you, I have been doing this for decades with no problems. It happens after I updated to Sequoia 15.6.1 (it's been good before 15.6.1.

Two thoughts on that: Apple recommend against these locations to protect against dataloss. We certainly see cases of creeping corruption on here when libraries are stored on inappropriately formatted disks. Often the first symptom is difficulty with importing or exporting.

Or perhaps Apple have added something to the recent version of Photos that allows it to detect that it's on an unsupported device. Again, we know that they have done this in the case of other inappropriate locations.

I am in your same situation, I have been able to export and download to and from the external hard drive to photos until recently. Have you been able to find a solution?

I have hundreds of thousands of photos that I am unable to import.

sungyle wrote: … That problem went on for almost two years, but finally someone here figured out why and it got fixed. I was so grateful.

You need to know that no one here fixed your Speak problem. We are just users like you, and Apple engineers don't read this stuff. If you have a problem like that, you should leave comments for Apple directly, here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

The other thing is your "non-system library" problem. Yer_Man, léonie, and I don't have this problem, so the proper thing is to find out what is different with your system. I can't see that you ever attempted to answer my questions :

Do you have a "non-system" library on your internal drive? Does it work there?

To narrow things down, try these steps:

• Restart the computer (of course)

• Re-start in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes, and it often helps. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this: 

          Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support 

• Make a new user and see if the same problem recurs with it.

• Rebuild your Photos Library--close Photos and re-launch by option-command-clicking the app icon.

It's very hard to help if you don't help us help you.

Sounds very weird. Good troubleshooting but an EtreCheck report might provide more clues:

Using EtreCheck to Troubleshoot Potential… - Apple Community

The original poster is not using a Hard Drive, he's using thumb drives. What format is your hard drive and how are you connecting to it?