Open Photos library files in your browser
The library Apple's Photos keeps on a Mac, and iPhoto kept before it. Look through one right here, without a Mac: its photos and videos, albums, people and favorites, laid out as the app shows them. Nothing leaves your device.
Or drop it anywhere on this page
What you'll see
Your library opens like a folder of its photos, laid out as the app shows them, with a page beside it on what it holds.
- All photos • Albums, events, projects and collections in their folders
- People, Years and Favorites • Hidden and Recently Deleted on request
- Show details • Title, caption, keywords, rating and place
- The app's preview • When an original didn't come
About Photos library
Photos took over from iPhoto and Aperture on the Mac in 2015, and keeps every photo in one library, Photos Library.photoslibrary in the Pictures folder. Finder shows it as one file, but it's a folder: the originals, the edited versions and the previews in folders of their own, and a database, Photos.sqlite since macOS Catalina, that knows each photo's albums, people, places, keywords and favorites. iPhoto's libraries keep theirs in Library.apdb, or AlbumData.xml in the oldest.
Off its Mac, a library is hard to look into: on Windows or in a ZIP it's thousands of files named by their IDs, with no albums. Photos opens it only on a Mac, upgrading it as it does, and a library from a newer macOS won't open in an older Photos at all.
Filepeek reads the library's database in your browser and lays it out as Photos does: All photos, your albums in their folders and your shared albums, People, Years, Favorites, and Hidden and Recently Deleted with Show hidden files. Each photo shows its original beside its edited version, or the preview Photos kept when the original stayed in iCloud. Show details gives its title, caption, keywords, people, place and when it was taken, and each photo is read only when you pick it, so a library of any size opens at once.
Apple Photos library
.photoslibrary • .photolibrary • .migratedphotolibrary
Format
- MIME type
- inode/directory
- Made by
- Apple's Photos on Macs, and iPhoto before it
- Released
- 2015
Inside the file
- Kept as
- A folder Finder shows as one file
- Database
- Photos.sqlite, or photos.db before 10.15
- Holds
- Originals, edits and previews
- Knows
- Albums, people, places, keywords
Opens in every browser
Filepeek opens Photos and iPhoto libraries in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari on a computer. Drop the library on the page, or a ZIP of it. On their own, browsers can't open a library.
- YouChromeOpens through Filepeek
- YouEdgeOpens through Filepeek
- YouFirefoxOpens through Filepeek
- YouSafariOpens through Filepeek
Apps that open Photos library
- WindowsNo app reads it • iCloud for Windows shows iCloud Photos instead
- MacPhotos, which upgrades it as it opens it
- iPhone and iPadNo app reads it • Photos shows iCloud Photos instead
- AndroidNo app reads it
Questions
How do I open my Photos library?
Drag Photos Library.photoslibrary from your Pictures folder onto this page, or drop a ZIP of it from another computer. On a Mac, picking it with the button makes the browser zip it first, which takes a while for a big library, so drag it instead.
Why do some photos show a preview?
With Optimize Mac Storage on, Photos keeps the originals in iCloud and only smaller copies on the Mac. Those photos show the copy Photos kept, and Show details says so.
Does it open iPhoto libraries?
Yes, from iPhoto 2 on: the newer ones by their database and the oldest by their AlbumData.xml, with their events, albums, faces and flags.
Can I get my photos out?
Yes. Pick a photo and Save it, or choose Save as ZIP for a whole album, each photo under its own name.