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Photos on an external hard drive, not opening

I put photos on an external hard drive from an old MacBook Pro. Tried to open photos from hard drive on newer MacBook Air and received error that states "you can't use this version of the application "Photos" with this version of macOS. You have photos 3.0"


Please help me find a way to retrieve all of my photos. I'm not the best with technology so you will have to break it down for me. Thanks!!!

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.1

Posted on Jul 4, 2022 9:12 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 5, 2022 3:46 AM

You have put the app on the hard drive, not the photos library. The app does not contain your photos, they are in the library.


The library is normally called photos library.photoslibrary, and located in your pictures folder. You need to copy that on to the external drive instead, then open it with the version of photos that is already on your new mac. Pay particular attention to the format of the drive - it needs to be MacOS extended, or APFS


Read also:

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)


2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 5, 2022 3:46 AM in response to Lexasmomma

You have put the app on the hard drive, not the photos library. The app does not contain your photos, they are in the library.


The library is normally called photos library.photoslibrary, and located in your pictures folder. You need to copy that on to the external drive instead, then open it with the version of photos that is already on your new mac. Pay particular attention to the format of the drive - it needs to be MacOS extended, or APFS


Read also:

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)


Photos on an external hard drive, not opening

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