You may have upgraded your Mac from Monterey to Ventura beta, or from Big Sur to Monterey, or finally decide to update from a previous version (such as Mojave, or High Sierra) to Catalina, looking forward to experiencing new awesome features and increased performance.
However, unexpected errors may occur after Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina or other version’s update, the commonest one is that your photos in Photos app lost/disappeared from your Mac, or photos missing because the originals cannot be found on your Mac. Don’t be panic, we have 6 solutions for you to recover lost/disappeared/missing Mac photos and photo albums.
Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac
Free DownloadThere are many reasons that lead to disappeared photos on Mac, but it is hard to determine what is exactly the reason to cause such an error, unless we test and exclude one by one. Anyway, following are probably the reasons that why your photos get disappeared from your Mac:
Therefore, as first aids to find or recover lost photos after mac update, you can enable iCloud sync, go to Trash bin, scan and remove malware, delete unwanted files to get more space. Or just search your pictures folder to make sure if your photos are still there on your Mac: click on Apple Menu>Go>Go to Folder>Input “~/Pictures/”>Go, check the Pictures folder or other folders you may use to save photos on your mac.
The fastest and most straightforward way to recover lost or disappeared photos on Mac after update is using a piece of data recovery tool, it saves your time and even brings some valuable data back to your MacBook Pro or Air. Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac— the best method for recovering lost images, videos, songs, etc. from both the internal Mac hard drive and external storage devices. It supports an extensive number of formats and drive types. If your pictures missing after upgrade to Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur or Catalina in the absence of a time machine backup, you can recover them using this software.
Free Download
With this, the procedure to recover disappeared images after upgrading to new macOS is completed successfully.
Photo library is the database where all photo files, thumbnails, metadata info, etc. stored. If you find the library folder but see no photos in it, then it may get corrupted. But luckily, Photos app allow users to Repair your photo library when photos or photo albums lost/disappeared for no reason, become unreadable or just missing.
1. Before doing Library First Aid, it's always a good idea to backup your hard drive firstly with either Time Machine or another method;
2. You may need to wait a few minutes or several hours for Photos to fix. In my case, while doing Library First Aid I can still use my Mac though it is a little sluggish during the process.
The process might stop syncing photos with iCloud. So it’d better to check it by navigating to Photos > Preferences > iCloud once the process is finished.
Sometimes, we don't get a correct setting for our Photos app, like we leave “Copy items to the Photo library” unchecked, so when we view our photos in Photos but later moved the photos to an external hard drive after Mac update, once we want to check the photos again, they became “missing” on your Mac since the original ones are not found. In this case, we need to restore these missing photos by Consolidate.
If there is no issue about your photo library and you just want to try other methods before installing Cisdem Data Recovery on your Mac, here are 3 free options to fix lost photos from Mac after update.
If your Mac photos albums disappeared after macOS Ventura or Monterey update, have a look at the "Recently Deleted" album in Photos app.
Matters need attention:
Still not able to recover Photo library after Mac update, now take a crack at Time Machine restore, if you have enabled and set up the Time Machine backup.
Still using iPhoto app on your Mac and working on an earlier macOS? Even your iPhoto library gets disappeared after mac update, we can still restore.
In the case that you don’t have a Time Machine backup but enabled iCloud backup, go check your iCloud account and find if the photos are still up there in the cloud, because there is a chance that you’ve disabled the iCloud update on Mac before the photos went lost from Mac. If it is a positive answer, download the photos from your iCloud to your Mac again for recovery.
Our Mac may store years or months of photos, they are valuable and we can’t afford to lose them. But chances are that they can be deleted or missing during the process of Mac upgrading. So, It is necessary to back up the entire Mac drive before upgrading to new Ventura or Monterey or other versions. You can back up them to multiple devices or using cloud service such as Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.
Once data loss occurs, just stay calm, and follow the methods above to recover lost or disappeared photos on Mac after update. The most helpful and all-in-one solution I think is to install a Mac photo recovery software or service.
Rosa has worked in Mac software industry for more than eight years. She believes that the purpose of software is to make life better and work more productively. In addition to writing, Rosa is also an avid runner.
William
Thanks Cisdem Data Recovery. I tried nearly all tips to find back my precious photos lost after my macOS up to Monterey, which were taken on my grandma's 75th birthday, but I failed. Cisdem has done it successfully.