Fix the Apple Photo App's "Unknown error code 1005" and more

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Having issues exporting photos from the Photos app on Mac? Don't worry, I've got you covered in this video! We have the fix to the dreaded "Unknown error (1,005)".

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Transcript Is your Mac OS Photo app acting up? For example, maybe not allowing you to export any of your photos? Let me show you how to quickly fix this. This is a common problem. It causes lots of frustration. People have had this happen at the worst possible moments or they think that their photos are gone forever. Not the case. It's just that the index needs to be fixed on them. Let me show you how to do that. It'll just take a couple minutes and have you back up and running again.

First thing, close the app. Now we're going to hold down the option command key and reopen the application. It should immediately pop into the repair library. We're going to say continue. After you say continue, you're going to need to either scan your fingerprint or in this case I'm going to enter my password. After I input my password, it should start repairing the library. (Screen image of the repair library screen).

The repair time is going to depend on how many photos you have. My library has around 20,000 photos and about 1,500 videos and took about 10 minutes to repair. It will depend on how much is on your computer and how fast your computer is. Mine's a MacBook Pro so it may be a little faster than most, but it should be fixed in about 10-15 minutes.

Hopefully this then gets us back here, where we can open up the library and are able to view and export our videos once again. (Screenshot showing normal operation) This is back to normal operation. Hopefully now we have your photos application working properly again and you're able to perform all the functions.

What may be going through your head right now is why did this happen and how do I prevent this in the future?

There are two main ways that you can get your database corrupted, and the two ways are going to be: low disk space. That is the number one. Make sure that you have plenty of disk space available when you're doing your imports. If you're constantly battling the low disk space it may be time to get an external drive and archive some stuff off. Or you may need to upgrade your internal storage on your laptop or desktop to accommodate. That is one of the main reasons that this happens.

The other reason it happens is around the operations not completing. Example, I have a Sony camera and I'm shooting my photos in both raw and jpeg format. What that means is I am importing lower res and higher res at the same time. When my imports run, the process after the import is taking longer to index and line those images up and to bring them in. If you do the import at the moment that it says it's done complete, and you shut the lid on your laptop you run the risk of corrupting your database because it still has some work to do in the background, to go through the photos and to index them and to put them into the right locations as well as logging into the database what these images are about and the metadata around them. So that is one of the major causes. To keep your disc clean you might want to use a product like Clean My Mac - they're not a sponsor and I'm not endorsing them - but it is a product that does do a good job at helping clean up background system files and everything on your Mac. Along with making sure that you have a little bit of patience after the import process runs and that you allow those processes to complete before putting your computer to sleep or shutting the lid on it.

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Fix the Apple Photo App's "Unknown error code 1005" and more

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