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Location of photos in Photos

Last November I replaced by MacBook Pro by using Time Machine and restore. My Photos app shows thumbnails of all my photos, but when I export I get a cocoa-1 error. When I look at Photo contents there are no folders with originals. Where are they?

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Feb 4, 2022 8:16 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 4, 2022 11:46 AM

In that case, your full library should have been transferred over.

Are you running a Managed or referenced library?

Change where your files are stored in Photos on Mac - Apple Support


Are you using any cleaning apps?

12 replies

Feb 4, 2022 12:30 PM in response to dfdunbar

dfdunbar wrote:

When I look at Photo contents there are no folders with originals. Where are they?

Just to be sure, you are looking at the contents of the Photos Library and not the Photos.app?

Your system version is shown as macOS 10.13. Photos 3 on macOS 13 did not yet have a folder originals in the Photos Library, but a folder Masters. "originals" has been introduced with macOS 10.15 Catalina.


The originals folder will not be holding all originals, if you have been using iCloud Photos and "Optimise Mac Storage". In that case you should enable iCloud Photos again to download the originals from iCloud.




Feb 4, 2022 12:44 PM in response to Keith Barkley

No to all. I used to go to the iPhotos app (Show Package Contents) and find Masters and Originals. Now. in the Finder, under Users/Pictures/Photo Library (Show Package Contents) I see Masters and Originals, so I created a new Photo Library and imported the pics from those folders. Many showed up but there are many large gaps. Yet, on the System Library the thumbnails for all pictures are there, just that when I attempt to export a picture I get the cocoa error, and if I attempt a locate it, it also can't be found. If the thumbnail is there, then I would presume the photo resides somewhere. There seems to be no Show In Finder option.


Many of the photos/video are also duplicated some 12 times, all pointing to the same file. I don't know how to delete the duplicate thumbnails without inadvertently deleting the original.

Feb 4, 2022 1:29 PM in response to Keith Barkley

I didn't do anything manually. I simply restored the new computer, opened it, and opened Photos. Everything was there. It wasn't until months later when I attempted an export that I discovered the original file wasn't there. The laptop I had backed up has been returned for recycling, so it's no longer available.


But the question is, how are thumbnails there without the file it points to?

Location of photos in Photos

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