iPhoto library cannot be opened in macOS Sequoia 15.6.1 with Photos app

Jerseybob wrote:

iphoto library cannot be opened in sequoia 15.6.1 with photos app. Err msg says "it can be opened with Monterey OS or earlier" what can i.do? Library is in Pictures folder.

Don't have iPhoto app and not sure it would work in Sequoia MacOs.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Upgrading iPhoto library - Problem

right iPhoto was deprecated years ago with plenty of warning to launch Photos.app to import the entire old library of Photos.

It was included with every Mac computer from 2002 to 2015

2015 w/ release of OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 included the new Photos app.

2018-2021 macOS Mojave 10.14 was the last version of macOS to officially support iPhoto.

You can try launching the Photos app holding the Option key down and see if you have an alternative library there to make it the default (if it seems appropriate to what you are doing.) Maybe by luck it is in there and functional(?)

you can read more here by Barney-15E:

Can't Update iPhoto because it is not ava… - Apple Community

I had this happen but luckily I still have a 2015 iMac with Monterey that still can open the Library.

If you don't have access such an older Mac, you can right click the iPhoto Library and select Show Package Contents.

Then CAREFULLY hold down the option key and drag the Masters folder (it might be called Originals in some versions of iPhoto) to your Desktop or some other folder. This will make a COPY of that folder if you hold down the option key here, instead of moving that folder out of the original iPhoto Library.

Then open Photos app on your Mac and Import the entire Masters folder (copy) [or Originals if it was named that] that you just created, on your Desktop or wherever you placed it..

This will import all the images from that iPhoto Library but it won't bring over albums or any customizing you had under iPhoto. But at least you will get to bring the image files over.

Jerseybob wrote:

I d

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/9868bf1f-7746-4dff-9f81-58efc6f84381

i did that and received an err msg.

Think I am out of luck.

:(

You can still manually import ALL the image files from that old iPhoto Library into the modern Photos app Library using the procedure I mentioned in my earlier post.

With more recent versions of Photos the job is to not upgrade the old iPhoto Library but instead to import from it to your current one.

Rather more useful is to use PowerPhotos which does a much better job than the built-in procedure. Have a read of the relevant portion of its documentation

https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/VersionedDocs/v8/migrate_libraries.html

and it can be got here:

https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/

steve626 wrote:

Brilliant suggestion and insight steve626.