Work in progress to repair file location bookmarks in Apple Photos.
Starting in macOS 10.15/Catalina, photos imported into the Apple Photos app and not copied into the library (e.g. referenced photos) are tied to a specific volume on a specific computer. If you move the photos to a different volume or computer, even with the same name, Photos will be unable to open the original files and will produce a "Missing file" dialog. This is caused because of macOS Sandbox security features and the fact that Photos now stores locations to photos using security-scoped file system bookmarks instead by path. This script will repair your photos library by updating the bookmarks.
This is a work in progress and it's a bit of hack. It requires a few manual steps to get it working (the script will prompt you).
First, move your Photos library to the new volume or the new computer. Note: the absolute path to the photos must remain the same. For example, if your photos were located on an external drive named "Fotos" and in a folder named "MyFotos" the path would /Volumes/Fotos/MyFotos, the new volume must also be named "Fotos" and the folder must be named "MyFotos".
- pip install -r requirements.txt
- python3 repair_photos_bookmarks.py PATH_TO_PHOTOS_LIBRARY
- Follow the prompts
Thanks to @dgleich for the idea behind this project and for contributing significant research, testing, and code! This was a joint effort.
- Add option to change the absolute path to the photos
- Incorporate as an option to osxphotos
For more information, see this discussion