ALL Photos gone from Imports folder

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ALL Photos gone from Imports folder

I think my Photos App is corrupted. I had 7 thousand photos in the Library. I transferred them to “Imports” file (on side

menu below “Recents”) and had them deleted from the library during the import. I tried numerous times to then copy all 7k by

dragging them to a file on an Extrenal HD.

The file was too big and failed each attempt. I then went and selected smaller amount and

dragged them to the file folder on the HD.

That worked a few times until the Mac crashed. No buttons nor anything was responsive. After a reboot, my entire Imports folder was

empty. I tried to recover the photos by

holding the Option and Command buttons and double clicking the Photo App icon

and them pressing restore. I then

restarted the Mac. No photos. I tried a few more times with different

steps. Nothing.

I plugged my iPhone in and noticed that while the iPhone

storage showed very low photos being stores, the iTunes/Photo App on the Mac showed

the previous 60GB of storage of photos ON my iPhone (no longer in the library). There were no photos in recently deleted on

my phone nor in the Trash on my Mac.

I then used Time Machine and went to my Pictures File and the

Photos Library.photoslibrary file and restored that from a recent backup where

18GB showed stored. I restarted, again

did that restore on the Photo App icon and still no photos on the Photos

App. I then tried an older version of

Time Machine; same results.

Now I am pretty certain the issue lies withing the Photo

App. I cannot delete and reinstall the

app and do not know what else to do.

My next step is to 1) use Time Machine to reboot a recent

backup on my entire computer, 2) Use a recent backup on my iPhone to reinstall

the entire iPhone and then 3) try to see if the photos on both are there and

try the process again (transferring iPhone photos to Photo App Library with hopefully many of the photos

still in the library, then Importing both the newly transferred iphone photos

and the older photos on the library to the Imports folder, then to a HD). Before I go through that headache, I wanted

to reach out to see if there I am easier fix?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.7

Posted on Aug 30, 2025 07:58 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 30, 2025 08:26 AM in response to tango376

This is very hard to follow. You didn't say where you were importing these pictures from.

The Imports dialog

shows a list of pictures that you might want to bring into Photos. You can select the pictures or choose all, and then those pictures are imported to the Library, and you can see them in the Imports view.

Like any album, Imports is just a list of pictures-- for Imports it's a list of pictures in the Library that you have just brought there.

The Library is the list of all the pictures in Photos. If pictures aren't in the Library, then they aren't in Photos.

If you delete pictures in a source before you select them and import them, then they no longer exist to be imported.

It sounds like Photos is behaving as expected.

As a general rule, I don't delete pictures from the source until at least 3 days after I've verified that they are safe somewhere else.

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