Photos can't open library

[etaleb]

Folks

When I opened Photos today and checked settings, it said 'Not the system LIbrary'. So I clicked on make it the system library and waited 1-2 minutes and the application froze and wasn't responsive. So, I did a force shutdown of the application. Now when I open Photos, it gives me this error - The library could not be opened. Photos was unable to open the library “Photos Library.photoslibrary”. (3143) and gives me 2 options - Quit or Open Other. When I select Open Other and choose my photo library, it gives me this error:
The operation couldn’t be completed. User is changing the system photo library

How do I repair this? I never had any iCloud turned on and don't use cloud services generally. Should I reboot?

Thanks

 

[Mike Boreham]

Folks

When I opened Photos today and checked settings, it said 'Not the system LIbrary'. So I clicked on make it the system library and waited 1-2 minutes and the application froze and wasn't responsive. So, I did a force shutdown of the application. Now when I open Photos, it gives me this error - The library could not be opened. Photos was unable to open the library “Photos Library.photoslibrary”. (3143) and gives me 2 options - Quit or Open Other. When I select Open Other and choose my photo library, it gives me this error:
The operation couldn’t be completed. User is changing the system photo library

How do I repair this? I never had any iCloud turned on and don't use cloud services generally. Should I reboot?

Thanks

Launch Photos app while holding down CMD + Opt keys.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204967

 

[etaleb]

No difference, it simply allows me to choose my library file but then give the same error - The operation couldn’t be completed. User is changing the system photo library

 

[etaleb]

So I decided to reboot and now Photos opens with no issue. In settings, I still see this - should I bother correcting this or doesn't matter if Spotlight can't search within it?

 

[Mike Boreham]

So I decided to reboot and now Photos opens with no issue. In settings, I still see this - should I bother correcting this or doesn't matter if Spotlight can't search within it?

Is the library on an external? spotlight can't search photos libs on external. Don't know if not being system lib also means spotlight can't search.

 

[etaleb]

Any symbolic link software could help here?

 

[MacBuddyz]

No difference, it simply allows me to choose my library file but then give the same error - The operation couldn’t be completed. User is changing the system photo library

It actually had to open photo library repair, not just library picker
If your CMD and CTRL are swapped for Windows-like experience, it is CTRL+OPT+click

 

[etaleb]

Got it. Btw, should I try to do symbolic links from the Pictures folder to a folder on my external HDD to allow spotlight to search within the library or it's unlikely it'll work?

 

[MacBuddyz]

Got it. Btw, should I try to do symbolic links from the Pictures folder to a folder on my external HDD to allow spotlight to search within the library or it's unlikely it'll work?

Link didn't let Spotlight index it in Ventura, but you can always try yourself, it's quick.

 

[jim4pim]

I had the same issue. However Photos Library didn't need repairing - if I copied it and had another name, it opened fine. If I restarted, the original album opened fine. Just every time I tried to set it as system photo library, Photos would stop responding.

However, this worked for me: My iPhone was set to sync from the Photos album. I switched off iPhone Photos sync. And then tried again with Photos to 'Use as System Photo Library'. And it worked straight away. All good now.

I hope this helps someone.