Accidentally deleted iPhoto and lost all of my photos, how can I get the photos back?
Not sure how I did it, but iPhoto is gone from my computer, along with all of my 800+ photos. How can I get my photos back? I reinstalled iPhoto and signed in, but it is empty.
Assuming you didn’t delete your iPhoto Library, but just iPhoto
- Reinstall iPhoto from the Mac App Store [you did this, go to 2]
- Hold down the option key while opening iPhoto to select a different default library. The current default is the empty library. We want to track down your original library.
- Click “Choose library...”
- By default, your iPhoto Library is located in
/Volumes/<HDNAME>/Users/<USERNAME>/Pictures/
. Assuming you haven’t deleted the library itself, or moved it to a different location, your original iPhoto Library will be located in your pictures folder. It will be labelediPhoto Library_2.iphotolibrary
,iPhoto Library.iphotolibrary~old
or something of that nature. I don’t know what the exact name will be. You will be able to tell the new from the old simply by examining the size (800 photos will be atleast a couple GB’s). Select the old library. - When iPhoto opens, your original library should be present and intact. If it’s not, you’ve just selected the current default library. Repeat steps 2-4 in this case.
- Once you have identified the correct original library - using step 5 - you can now safely delete the empty (false) iPhoto Library from your pictures folder. Your original iPhoto library is now your default.