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some photos in photo app donot appear in iovie

On macbook, using imovie , some photos i see in photo app do not appear in imovie ??


MacBook Pro (M2 Max, 2023)

Posted on May 1, 2023 4:33 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 1, 2023 6:42 PM

Hi, Lenglen,


Possibly some of the photos are in a legacy format that iMovie no longer supports. Also, iMovie will only access photos in the Photos app that are in a Photos app library that is designated the system photo library. So if some of your photos are in a photos app library that is not designated as the system photos library, they would not display when clicking on the Photos item in the iMovie project sidebar. You could still drag them directly from the Photos app library into an iMovie project timeline, or drag to your desktop and from there drag into an iMovie timeline.


To confirm that your unrecognized photos are in the system photos library, open the library that contains them and click on Photos/Preferences/General. In the box that appears, make sure that the words "Use as system photo library" are grayed out. That will mean that the library is already your system photos library. If it is not grayed out, click on the words to gray them out. Be aware that an account can only have one system photos library.


One thing that you can try is to delete/reset iMovie preferences and see if that solves the problem. To delete/reset preferences open iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and select to delete preferences in the box that appears. iMovie usually will open in a new empty library. If so, reopen your old library to get back to your projects. Possibly you may need to reboot to set the changes.  Deleting preferences is a safe procedure that

will not cause data loss or disruption to your project.


-- Rich





1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 1, 2023 6:42 PM in response to Lenglen

Hi, Lenglen,


Possibly some of the photos are in a legacy format that iMovie no longer supports. Also, iMovie will only access photos in the Photos app that are in a Photos app library that is designated the system photo library. So if some of your photos are in a photos app library that is not designated as the system photos library, they would not display when clicking on the Photos item in the iMovie project sidebar. You could still drag them directly from the Photos app library into an iMovie project timeline, or drag to your desktop and from there drag into an iMovie timeline.


To confirm that your unrecognized photos are in the system photos library, open the library that contains them and click on Photos/Preferences/General. In the box that appears, make sure that the words "Use as system photo library" are grayed out. That will mean that the library is already your system photos library. If it is not grayed out, click on the words to gray them out. Be aware that an account can only have one system photos library.


One thing that you can try is to delete/reset iMovie preferences and see if that solves the problem. To delete/reset preferences open iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and select to delete preferences in the box that appears. iMovie usually will open in a new empty library. If so, reopen your old library to get back to your projects. Possibly you may need to reboot to set the changes.  Deleting preferences is a safe procedure that

will not cause data loss or disruption to your project.


-- Rich





some photos in photo app donot appear in iovie

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