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Photos lost from Photos app

How do I find and restore many photos which are missing when I opened Photos app on my MacBookPro with Monterey?

Posted on Jul 22, 2022 9:40 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 23, 2022 2:02 AM

You may have opened a different Photos Library than before.

  • Quit Photos, if it is running.
  • Hold down th options key while launching Photos again. Keep holding down the key until the library chooser dialog appears, then release the key.
  • Now select a different Photos Library from the list of libraries. Try all libraries in turn.

Is there a different library? Where sre you keeping your Photos Libraries? In the Pictures folder or somewhere else?


What has happened before you did no longer see your photos?

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 23, 2022 2:02 AM in response to hendrick17

You may have opened a different Photos Library than before.

  • Quit Photos, if it is running.
  • Hold down th options key while launching Photos again. Keep holding down the key until the library chooser dialog appears, then release the key.
  • Now select a different Photos Library from the list of libraries. Try all libraries in turn.

Is there a different library? Where sre you keeping your Photos Libraries? In the Pictures folder or somewhere else?


What has happened before you did no longer see your photos?

Jul 24, 2022 1:00 AM in response to léonie

Prior to my pos abovet, I had restored the system photo library from a recent TimeMC backup, and the missing photos are still missing. I also had copied this recent backup copy into another directory on the MBP, so creating the second Photo Library on my MBP. Then using the method suggested by Leonie, I opened the libraries alternately as suggested, and this did not resolve the missing photos issue.

I note that many of my photos had been filed into Albums, and the album headings remain, showing either zero photos in the album, or one or a few photos remaining in a few of the albums.

I am not aware of any actions I've taken to cause this missing photos problem. There are posts elsewhere on the web about the Mac Photos app causing many photos to go missing when updating macOS for some of the recent release updates - currently I am running Monterey v12.3.1.

I must admit I do not check thru all my apps on the Mac after every macOS update after the update says it has completed normally, so based on user posts elsewhere on the web, it is possible the photos were lost during any one of my recent macOS updates. Short of restoring a number of older TimeMc backups and then manually trying to find all the 100's of missing photos, I've not seen any other way of recovering from this.

Regrettably, this missing photos problem has occurred for me once previously, about 6-12 months ago. At that time from a few web searches I found a solution which involved a few simple actions and then opening the Photos app whilst holding down a combination of keys (similar to Leonie's suggestion). Magically it worked. I assumed this error would never happen again for me, and if it did, I would again be able to find the fixit advice on the web - I now cannot again find this advice..

This is also a serious integrity problem for the Photos software which has been known for some time, and Apple still has chosen to not fix it.

Jul 24, 2022 7:18 AM in response to hendrick17

Perhaps you recently tried to repair the Photos Library - to repair a library, quit Photos if it is running, then double click the library you want to repair while holding down the key combination ⌥⌘ until you are seeing the dialog to repair the library. Then release the keys.


But repairing a library, that is syncing with iCloud is an expensive operation. It will result in a new upload of the items from the library to iCloud which will take a long time, because the repaired library needs again to be compared to the iCloud library.







Photos lost from Photos app

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