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You are here: Home / How-to / Cannot Close Photos Library? Stuck on “Closing the Library” Message? How-To Fix

Cannot Close Photos Library? Stuck on “Closing the Library” Message? How-To Fix

By Elizabeth Jones 39 comments Last updated October 6, 2018

Recently, after using my Mac’s Photos app and uploading some photos, I wasn’t able to close Photos. I saw a pop-up message that Photos was “Closing the Library.” I left it “as is” for hours only to see that same message still there–it was still stuck on “Closing the Library” message. And the app wouldn’t close, no matter what! It remained open and unresponsive.

I wasn’t even able to properly shut down my Mac without it requesting to exit Photos and that cannot be done without first closing the library! It’s a no-win situation. My only two options were Cancel or Try Again.

If this problem sounds familiar, you are not alone. Luckily, I learned a few tricks on the way that alleviated my problem with the Photos Library. And I’m sharing those with you today.

So let’s get to it!

Contents

  • 1 Stuck on “Closing the Library” Message: Think Simple
    • 1.1 Force Quit Not Working?
  • 2 Repair Your Photos Library
  • 3 Reader Tips 
    • 3.1 Related Posts:

Stuck on “Closing the Library” Message: Think Simple

Sometimes we make things complex when simplicity saves the day. SO the first measure to try is to force quit Photos.

Try the Simple Commands First

  • Close the application using Command + W
  • Or try Command + Q to quit the application

Force Quit a few ways:

  • Choose Force Quit from the Apple Menu Cannot Close Photos Library? Stuck on "Closing the Library" Message? How-To Fix
  • Press Command-Option-Esc
    • Select Photos from the Force Quit list, then click Force Quit Cannot Close Photos Library? Stuck on "Closing the Library" Message? How-To Fix
  • Relaunch the Finder
    • Press the Option key and then click and hold Finder in your Dock
    • Select Relaunch from menu options Cannot Close Photos Library? Stuck on "Closing the Library" Message? How-To Fix

 

Once Photos quits, shut down your Mac and wait for a few minutes. Power the computer back up and open Photos. See if your Photos app seems to be working fine, and updates the library with photos taken recently.

Force Quit Not Working?

If force quit isn’t working, force your Mac to shut down by holding down the power button until your Mac turns off. You lose any unsaved changes to open and unsaved files.Cannot Close Photos Library? Stuck on "Closing the Library" Message? How-To Fix

Repair Your Photos Library

  1. Backup your Mac (and Photos) if possible using Time Machine, iCloud Photo Library, or your backup method of choice
    1. If you use iCloud Photo Library, remember that only the photos and video in your System Photo Library are synchronized with iCloud
    2. Or Manually copy your photo library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy
  2. Press Option-Command and double-click the Photos icon in the Dock or in your Applications folder
  3. The Repair Library window opens
  4. Click Repair to rebuild your photo library

Cannot Close Photos Library? Stuck on "Closing the Library" Message? How-To Fix

Once repaired, take a look around and make sure that all your photos, videos, screenshots, etc. are showing up in your albums.

Reader Tips 

  • I clicked on Photos so that the word Photos showed in my Bookmarks Bar. Then I went to the Apple Icon in the Bar and clicked on force quit. That made a pop up that highlighted Photos and I clicked force quit and my Photos all opened up right where I left off
  • Here is what I ended up doing. First, I made a copy of the Photos Library on an external drive and since I was using iCloud Photo Library, I made sure the photos were synced to the cloud. Then I deleted the library from my drive and created a new one and allowed the pictured to resync with the new library. I lost my projects doing it this way.
  • I clicked on Photos so that the word Photos showed in my Bookmarks Bar. Then I went to the Apple Icon in the Bar and clicked on force quit. That made a pop up that highlighted Photos and I clicked force quit and my Photos all opened up right where I left off.
liz - apple
Elizabeth Jones( Content Producer )

For most of her professional life, Amanda Elizabeth (Liz for short) trained all sorts of folks on how to use media as a tool to tell their own unique stories. She knows a thing or two about teaching others and creating how-to guides!

Her clients include Edutopia, Scribe Video Center, Third Path Institute, Bracket, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Big Picture Alliance.

Elizabeth received her Master of Fine Arts degree in media making from Temple University, where she also taught undergrads as an adjunct faculty member in their department of Film and Media Arts.

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Reader Interactions

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Show 39 Comments

  1. F B says

    March 2, 2021 at 5:25 AM

    i am on a desktop though, so that might be the problem

    Reply
  2. F B says

    March 2, 2021 at 5:23 AM

    this didn’t work for me

    Reply
  3. Too sleepy says

    June 15, 2020 at 11:27 AM

    Thank you so much. I thought I was just too sleepy and was doing something wrong and now frustrated because all my work had vanished. Again thank you and now I will get some sleep and start this project up later.

    Reply
  4. fifi says

    June 5, 2020 at 6:08 AM

    thank you soooooooooooooooooo much!!!!!!!
    it really workes!!!! ^^

    Reply
  5. gal ofek says

    April 12, 2020 at 8:32 AM

    CAN I PLEASE MARRY YOU?
    seriously though, thank you!!! I had no idea this was so simple.
    My iPhone ran out of storage and I was willing to pay to get it fixed, but due to the quarantine I had no one to go to and was helpless (as helpless as an iPhone can make you feel). THANK YOU. Can’t stress this enough. Thank you.

    Reply
  6. Lisa zhu says

    December 30, 2019 at 7:19 PM

    Hi, I just wanted to say thank you so so much for the instructions, my photo library is fixed now, I really thought I would never be able to open it ever again until I saw this. Just thank you so much!!! <3

    Reply
  7. LaBumba says

    December 17, 2019 at 2:28 PM

    Hi!
    Thank you soo much!!

    Reply
  8. Beverly C Manzano says

    November 18, 2019 at 2:48 PM

    This worked perfectly, thanks!!

    Reply
  9. Zuzana says

    September 4, 2019 at 12:38 PM

    Thank you very much!

    Reply
  10. Julie says

    August 22, 2019 at 7:28 PM

    Thanks. Your help worked for me.

    Reply
  11. RandomPerson says

    June 13, 2019 at 2:18 AM

    omg, thanks so much!

    This was annoying me for weeks until I finally looked for a way to fix it.

    Usually, when I search for ways to fix some of my computers many issues, the websites don’t make any sense and doesn’t help at all, but this helped so much and this problem has finally been resolved!!

    Reply
  12. Chris says

    May 18, 2019 at 9:50 AM

    Had the same issue. Force Quit the photos app but still unable to import. Repairing Photos library, etc. did not help. Ran disk first aid on primary volume, now all better. No issues reported, but somehow it is fixed. Seems photos app does not set up its files quite right, permissions or links or something.

    Reply
  13. pops1000 says

    March 14, 2019 at 1:22 AM

    Thank you for your help.
    I can force quit photos but am having repeated trouble on reopening and cannot bring up the repair option. I tried the alt-cmd-double click photos . Is there another way please?
    Thanks in advance

    Reply
  14. P.W. says

    February 28, 2019 at 5:28 PM

    I just run into this issue last night. I’ve never had this with my 10 yrs.old IMac running on El Capitan. Thanks for the info anyway.

    Reply
  15. Anne says

    February 23, 2019 at 2:22 PM

    Couldn’t work out what or why this was happening and all I had to do was force quit and everything seems to be OK now. Thanks so much for the info.

    Reply
  16. A says

    December 25, 2018 at 10:13 AM

    Thank u very much this steps were really care and it helped aloud

    Reply
    • M says

      December 27, 2018 at 12:32 PM

      Thank you so much!!!!

      Reply
  17. SandyKing says

    October 24, 2018 at 5:29 PM

    Thank you !!!!

    Reply
  18. Samantha says

    October 18, 2018 at 7:23 AM

    whoever you are I LOVE YOU! THANK YOU!

    Reply
  19. Ting says

    July 30, 2018 at 3:28 PM

    why I don’t have the relaunch on Finder??!
    what should I do….

    Reply
    • SK says

      July 30, 2018 at 7:00 PM

      Hi Ting,

      It’s probably the order of things:

      1. Press the Option Key and hold it down
      2. With the Option key held down, click and hold the Finder icon in the Dock
      3. Wait for the pop-up menu to appear and then select Relaunch

      That sound do it.

      If it’s still not working:

        Launch Activity Monitor.

        Look for Finder and click on it to Highlight

        Click the larger “x” icon (not the red one) at the top left corner of Activity Monitor’s Window to relaunch Finder

      Sam

      Reply
  20. tayyy_mayyy says

    July 30, 2018 at 11:07 AM

    This helped tremendously! Thank you so much!!!

    Reply
  21. Sounddiver says

    July 6, 2018 at 11:25 AM

    The very simple solution for “Closing the Library” Message on my iMac High Sierra 10.13.5 was to use cmd-w instead of cmd-q. Closing the library ends Photos.app. too.
    No more “force quits” in my case

    good luck – W.

    Reply
    • Mark Surloff says

      August 16, 2018 at 5:49 AM

      Yes, Command + W. works for me…thanks!

      Reply
  22. Mary Johnson says

    April 9, 2018 at 9:17 AM

    I cannot get out of “closing the library”. I am not very tech savvy and don’t understand all the technical jargon that most people use. All I want to do is get out of “closing the library” so I can continue to view my photos. (I also have an update that won’t update due to this issue.)

    Reply
    • SK says

      April 9, 2018 at 10:16 AM

      Hi Mary,

      Please try to force quit the Photos App.

      How to force a Mac app to quit

        Choose Force Quit from under the Apple () menu or press Command-Option-Esc
        Select the Photos app from the list in the Force Quit pop-up menu, then click Force Quit

      Hope that explains it!

      Cheers,

      SK

      Reply
  23. stacy says

    March 13, 2018 at 11:57 AM

    When I open iphotos, it won’t show pics from my iphone anymore. I can’t close the library without force quitting it every time. I checked icloud settings. It wasn’t set to include iphotos so I added it. Then iphotos showed it was downloading all 12,000 photos already on it again so I undid the icloud selection to include iphotos. Iphoto still won’t close naturally. I still must force quit every time I open it.

    Reply
    • SK says

      March 14, 2018 at 1:12 PM

      Hi Stacy,

      Sorry to hear that you’re continuing to have issues with your Photos App. You mention iPhoto instead of Photos–are you using OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 and above or an older (legacy) Mac OS X version? I just want to be certain what photography app we are talking about here.

      First, in order for your Mac Photos App to show your iPhone’s photos, both devices (Mac and iPhone) must use iCloud Photo Library OR iCloud Photo Stream and be signed in with the same Apple ID. You may encounter problems with photo syncing if you’re near or exceeded your iCloud Storage allotment. To check, on your iPhone, go to Settings > Apple ID Profile > iCloud. If you need additional space on iCloud, consider purchasing a monthly upgraded storage plan OR clear out some space on your iCloud account.

      In case of Photos App (Yosemite and above), you can actually have more than one photo library saved. However, you are only able to open a single photo library at any one time. When you open your Mac’s Photos App, the default library it opens is the System Library. To check if you have multiple libraries, close the Photos App and then relaunch holding down the Option Key–see if there are additional photo libraries on your Mac. If so, open each one by one (you’ll need to close and relaunch with the Option key to check each library) and see if your photos are contained in one of those additional libraries.

      If you locate the correct library, you can designate it as your system library. Your System Photo Library is the only library that can be used with iCloud Photo Library, iCloud Photo Sharing, and My Photo Stream–AND therefore it is the only library that can sync with your iPhone and any additional devices. Just make sure your Mac, iPhone, and any other device are signed into the SAME APPLE ID account.

      If your problem persists, let us know

      SK

      Reply
  24. Bonnie says

    December 4, 2017 at 11:36 AM

    I am having the same issue since updating to High Sierra on my 2013 MacBook Pro. I increased my RAM at Apple store wont so it doesnt crash but still doesnt close the library. Was told may have been an issue when updating- interrupted wifi – but it seems like many people have the problem. Thanks for the suggestions. Not panicking anymore

    Reply
  25. LS says

    November 17, 2017 at 6:14 AM

    Should have read ‘lose’’ not ‘use’ I don’t like predictive text!

    Reply
    • SK says

      November 17, 2017 at 7:49 AM

      Happens to us all! The beauty and the ugliness of predictive text!

      Reply
  26. LS says

    November 17, 2017 at 6:11 AM

    I was working on a book project just before the ‘closing the library’ message. If I force quit will I use all the work on that project? I don’t want that to happen. Thank you

    Reply
    • SK says

      November 17, 2017 at 7:48 AM

      HI LS,

      Sorry your having trouble with your Photos App. When you force quit an app, you do lost the data since the last time you saved. So if you did not save your project, it’s likely it will not show up when you open the app again. However, macOS does include a recovery option that sometimes caches your work.

      If you can save your project, try doing that before you force quit.

      SK

      Reply
  27. Stephanie Bennett says

    November 14, 2017 at 4:39 PM

    Thank you! Step 1 worked for me to get back in my photos & get out of closing library.

    Reply
    • Elizabeth says

      November 14, 2017 at 5:09 PM

      Yippee! Glad it worked for you. Awesome.

      Liz

      Reply
  28. Gabriek says

    October 20, 2017 at 6:45 AM

    I am having the closing library problem too but I am afraid of rebuilding the library because I don’t want to have to upload and resync my entire library to the cloud (around 350GB). Does it take very long for resync the icloud after you use the rebuild tool? Thanks a lot!

    Reply
    • SK says

      October 20, 2017 at 8:02 AM

      Hi Gabriek,

      It can take a long time. It depends on your internet connection speed and how much traffic is currently routing to Apple’s Servers. Good luck!

      Liz

      Reply
  29. Cameron Butler says

    October 8, 2017 at 9:16 PM

    THANK YOU SO MUCH I APPRECIATE EVERYONE WHO DOES THIS KIND OF THING IT HELPS OUT SO MANY MORE PEOPLE THAN ARE COMMENTING AND IM GIVING U APPRECIATION FROM ME AND ALL OF THEM UR THE MVP!!!!!

    Reply
  30. Angie says

    September 9, 2017 at 8:16 PM

    Thanks… I’ve been “stuck” with the library closing too… step one worked for me 🙂

    Reply

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