Your Photos library is incompatible with iCloud Photo Library.

I have now got Big Sur 11.01. I have had problems for years with Photos and iPhotos including being repeatedly asked to open Photos - even when it looks like photos is open on my desktop! I cant make any photobooks or store to iCloud. I seem to have a Photolibrary 2 in users/(me)/Pictures and when I hit Other Library, I have found a few (about 80) photos in Pictures. they are greyed out and wont open when I tap 'open', they also seem to be in the users/(me)/Pictures folder.

when I tap the Photos icon in the Dock - all my pictures show up.

Help - this whole business of Photos, iPhotos etc is driving me loopy

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Feb 6, 2021 9:58 AM

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Posted on Feb 6, 2021 10:05 AM

Go to photos preferences, general tab. Is the button "use as system photo library" greyed out? If not, click it.


Then try again.

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Feb 6, 2021 10:09 AM in response to TonyCollinet

thanks - it was greyed out. I live in terror of losing all the photos - my last Mac HD got corrupted and stopped backing up. I lost granny and grandads 60th wedding anniversary pics.

I dont want them on the cloud really as I gather Ic ant back them up to an external hard drive if they are also going to the cloud?

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Feb 6, 2021 10:48 PM in response to drip225

Even if you are using iCloud Photos with "Optimise Storage" you can back up all original image files and edited versions by exporting them from Photos to an external volume with "File > Export > Unmodified Original" and "File > Export > ... Images". And keep a backup copy of the Photos Library as well.

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Your Photos library is incompatible with iCloud Photo Library.

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