How to restore your library from a database backup

If your PhotoStructure library isn’t opening because you recently downgraded from an alpha or beta build, or due to database corruption, know that you can manually restore your library’s database to a previous version.

Although your library’s database is very robust, an incomplete backup or incomplete shutdown may lead to this situation.

First, find a backup to restore from… 🔗

Your library database is stored as a single .sqlite3 file.

Periodic database backups are automatically stored in $LIBRARY/.photostructure/models/backup (where “$LIBRARY” is the path to your PhotoStructure library).

When PhotoStructure is upgraded, a version backup is also placed in $LIBRARY/.photostructure/models/version-backup.

Any recent version should work, as they are vacuumed, optimized, and validated before being added to the backup directory.

Note that you will lose whatever changes occurred since that backup was taken, so a more recent backup is better.

…and then restore from that backup 🔗

  1. Make sure PhotoStructure is shut down.

  2. Copy (don’t move) a recent backup, for example $LIBRARY/.photostructure/models/backup/20200618-230659-seq44-set3-db.sqlite3, to $LIBRARY/.photostructure/models/db.sqlite3

  3. Restart PhotoStructure.

If you’re still having problems, please post your system information and error message to the forum.

Notes đź”—

If the backup was from a while ago, you may want to start sync (slow) or rebuild, available from the navigation menu, to tell PhotoStructure to re-synchronize all the assets in your library.

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