I’m running macOS Catalina 10.15.3, and can’t seem to find out how, or if its even possible, to add my photos library to PMS.
Please help!
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I want to do the same thing. I have MacOS Catalina 10.15.3 and the latest Plex Server SW. Is it even possible to do this and keep the folders I have set up in Mac Photos? Finding out what must be a very common question and use case is exceedingly difficult on this forum.
So are you not able to get stuff to play with Plex or are you looking for a how-to.
I don’t use Apple Photos (photoshop/bridge user) but am some what familiar with its basic usage.
Try this: in photos, export to a seperate folder some of your pictures. Name that folder whatever you want i.e. Vacation 2019. Before you export choose jpg for format for this test. Plex doesn’t like Apples HEIF yet in case your images are in that format, thus the reason to convert to jpg.
Start up Plex and go to “Add new library” Choose Photo option. Chnge the photo name to Vacation 2019. The next screen should ask you to locate folder you created earlier. Select that folder and click create or next. Not at my computer but pretty obvious.
Give a minute. Do you see your pictures?
I guess I may not have been clear enough my post. I know how to add a library of pictures. But under setting/plugins there’s a spot to add the xml path to an iPhoto library. But Mac doesn’t use iPhoto anymore, its just called Photos. I’m assuming that I could link my Plex account to the Photos app and see my photos library that updates automatically from my iCloud. I have tried to add the path to the XML file, but either I’m doing something wrong or it doesn’t work due to Apple’s updated program.
Does that help?
The “Enable iPhoto channel” option turns on the old iPhoto plugin. If you look under your plugins, you’ll see the iPhoto plugin enabled there now. When I tried clicking on it the plugin though, it did nothing at all. Given the general end of life support on Plex plugins, i’m not surprised.
Yeah, I’ve clicked on that & nothing happens as well. I really wish this feature could be updated
I wish I could see my Photos Library on PMS…
exactly the thing am struggling with. any luck?
Nope. No such luck 
I’m a mac head, all you need to do export to a folder in pictures and link that folder to Plex.
That simple
Export from Photos app available in Photos file menu.
I’ve done this with little effort. If you already have something in Pictures temperately remove and select all and add a folder, named what ever. Return the other files. There you have it.
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Yes, that works to create a folder with specific pictures. I was hoping to be able to add the whole directory, or even link to the photo stream, so that any new pictures I take that are uploaded via the cloud would also appear on plex without me having to manually export them all the time…
Does that make it clearer?
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Ok, I understand. Then you will have to create separate Albums in photos that are exported to add.
Or add directly to that folder in pictures and will update automatically.
There are other Photo apps that can help like Adobe, GraphiConverter.
So how do I link the folder in plex? I can’t find out where the individual folders are in ‘Finder’, I can only see them in the photos app.
it would be awesome to get a workaround on this issue.
Hi All,
Found this thread as I was looking to accomplish the same thing. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but I think this will work: https://pypi.org/project/osxphotos/ (pretty nifty project).
The idea being you have a lot of options to play with and you’ll be able to export photos from your Photos library to wherever you want.
So, run osxphotos on your Photos library and export all photos (it even has an option to only export new photos as it keeps it own db) to a folder. Then you’d add that Folder with the exported folders to Plex the same way you add a Library for photos etc.
If you wanted to set and forget you could technically add an osxphotos command to a cronjob or scheduled task.
Considering it’s written in Python it would be cool if @Plex was able to get it somehow implemented in the PMS.
The good - it’s an option that achieves what I believe you’re after in this thread.
The bad - the double up of storage due to the photos sitting in the Mac Photos (Orignals folder) as well as in an external folder makes me a bit sad, but at least it’s an option.
Yeah, doubling up my photos storage isn’t the greatest. I’ve got years and years and gigabytes and gigabytes of pick and videos that I don’t have space on my hard drive to double up. Maybe an external hard drive forever hooked up to my laptop would work. But, yeah, it’d be great in Plex could make this a feature again!
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Hi again,
I’m still wish to do serve my Photos Library on PMS without doubling up my photos storage. Is there any workaround?
Hi all,
I have found a work around for this, if you navigate to the photo library on the Mac, right click and select show contents, you will see all the sub folders in the photo library. Find the folder which says originals, copy the path and add that as a photos lib in PMS. That’s it done! Everything will sync and be available in PMS.
The only downside is, PMS will not pickup nice clean tags and display random names for each picture but I have lived with that for ages.
Hope this helps.
P.s if you’re like me and have over a quarter TB of photos, be prepared to let your computer hurt as PMS syncs.
Thanks,
Hey, ssidik, I tried this. But when I go back into Plex it says there’s no media in there. And believe me, there’s a lot of photos. I copied the path
/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/[myusername]/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/originals. And still nothing.
