Time Machine lets you peer within the Photos Library to retrieve specific images, but I would suggest the best course of action with the highest chance of success is to retrieve the entire archived library. I typically recommend not mucking around inside that package unless you have a corrupted and unrecoverable Photos Library. However, it contains lots of pieces, including the original versions of every imported image and video, thumbnails, an organizational database, and files that represent modifications you’ve made to images. If you have a very large drive or haven’t performed any Time Machine updates in the months since you last had access to the drive, the old Photos Library’s state should be preserved.Īssuming that’s the case, we can proceed.Īpple treats the Photos Library (located in the Pictures folder) as an integral thing: it has a single icon and you interact with it like a file. Time Machine retains weekly snapshots until a drive becomes too full to keep the oldest ones.