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Recovery photos from Time Machine

I purchased an iMac 27” and I would like to get my photos from iPhoto from a MacBook Pro that has crashed. I had backed up my MacBook Pro on my Time Machine. Can I download those photos into my new Mac?

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Dec 30, 2020 5:48 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 30, 2020 6:00 AM

If your photos were all in the /Users/yourname/Pictures/iPhoto Library.photolibrary on the MacBook Pro, then you can restore that library back to your iMac in the Pictures folder, by launching Time Machine from your Applications folder. You could also restore the entire Pictures folder if you wanted the original images and the iPhoto Library.


If the iMac is running Mojave (10.14) or earlier, you can restore iPhoto.app (v9.6.1) to your iMacs /Applications folder too. The iPhoto application is 32-bit and will not work on macOS Catalina or later. The replacement application (Photos) can migrate your iPhoto library to the Photos Library.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 30, 2020 6:00 AM in response to radnad28

If your photos were all in the /Users/yourname/Pictures/iPhoto Library.photolibrary on the MacBook Pro, then you can restore that library back to your iMac in the Pictures folder, by launching Time Machine from your Applications folder. You could also restore the entire Pictures folder if you wanted the original images and the iPhoto Library.


If the iMac is running Mojave (10.14) or earlier, you can restore iPhoto.app (v9.6.1) to your iMacs /Applications folder too. The iPhoto application is 32-bit and will not work on macOS Catalina or later. The replacement application (Photos) can migrate your iPhoto library to the Photos Library.

Dec 30, 2020 10:08 AM in response to radnad28

Yes. You could visit System Preferences : Sharing panel on the MacBook Pro, and select File Sharing. Provided you are on the same network subnet, and the user name is identical between the iMac and MacBook Pro, you should be able to notice under Locations in the iMac Finder sidebar, a Macintosh HD entry which is the MacBook Pro drive. Once you have selected the Macintosh HD in the sidebar, double-click on the Users folder and then again on. your username to gain access to the Pictures folder on the MacBook Pro.


Here is the Macintosh HD being served by my MacBook Air to my M1 Mac mini:



Ensure that you disable Sharing : File Sharing on the Macbook Pro when you are done, so it does not appear in any public Wi-Fi locations.

Recovery photos from Time Machine

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