We're making changes to the Community, so you may have received some notifications - thanks for your patience and welcome back. Learn more here.
Forum Discussion
Photo Library not reachable on macOS after Dropbox sync
Hello all,
I am running MaCos Ventura 13.1. I have both iCloud and Dropbox storage for my photos (call me paranoid if you like :-). I like the ability to select a photo from the photo library when I compose messages in Apple mail, for example. Since a few days ago Dropbox application announced that they wish to move files into a new space and I authorised it. Since that time the application icon shows that it has problems syncing with the cloud files and neither photos nor spotlight work. Thank you for your help !
Hello everyone,
We have an update on this. This has occurred as Apple no longer allows Photos Library to be synced with cloud-storage services. You can find out more about this here in the Expected Changes article.
Regards,
Emmet
I've just accepted a Dropbox update which "moved" my Dropbox folder to a more secure location and now I get the error "Photos Library.photos library is in Dropbox, and needs to be moved to a folder on your Mac to open"
I use to Dropbox as my Photos location - what has happened here? This devalues my Dropbox subscription and use-case pretty significantly if I can't work around the error. FYI - to anyone saying I shouldn't be doing this - I've been synching this DB without any errors for the past 7-8 years and it's currently about 50GB in size
- Emmet
Community Manager
Hello everyone,
We have an update on this. This has occurred as Apple no longer allows Photos Library to be synced with cloud-storage services. You can find out more about this here in the Expected Changes article.
Regards,
Emmet
Hi everyone!
The Photos library shouldn't have been moved at all.
When I updated to the new version of DropBox it moved my backup folders (in this case I was backing up user/pictures and user/desktop) to the cloud folder but apparently, that was an error.
So if anyone is having their Pictures or other backed-up folders moved to the cloud folder they should reinstall the new version Dropbox from scratch. They might then need to manually move their backed-up folder content back to the normal location in their user folder.
The intended behaviour (which actually hasn't changed) for the new version of Dropbox is for backup folders to be one-way upload/backup which means it doesn't need to move to the cloud folder.
Only two-way synced files/folders need to abide by the new cloud folder rules for 13.2 Ventura.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey Mirna D., thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Can you send us a screenshot of the message you mentioned on the application icon?
And if you try to rebuild the Spotlight index, does that help?
Cheers!
Dear Hannah,
many thanks for your help ! Rebuilding the spotlight did not help, since the Photo library is greyed out in the choice of files to + or _ in the Spotlight privacy. Here is the screenshot of what happens when I try to open the Photo Library. It says that the Photo Library is in Dropbox and that I should move it back to Mac to able to open it. Best wishes ! Mirna
- Jay
Hi Mirna D., as it seems you're on the new version of Dropbox for Mac OS, Apple no longer allows Photos Library to be stored over cloud-storage services, so you'd need to move it to your local storage.
