You’ve hit a fairly well-known bug with the way that iTunes and Aperture talk to each other. First off, don’t panic, you don’t have anything broken in Aperture (I know that for me, it’d be a nightmare to have my photo library corrupted, I have thousands upon thousands of photos therein!). In fact, there are a couple of ways that you can try to solve this problem, because anecdotally sometimes one of ’em works, and other times, well, it doesn’t.
Also, it’s worth noting that this can also affect iPad users who want to share photos from their Aperture library, it’s not just an iPhone or iPod problem.
Let me start by showing exactly what the bug you’re talking about is…
I duplicated this by going into iTunes on my MacBook Pro, plugging in my iPhone 3GS, then clicking on the Photos tab. On the top is a “Sync Photos From” option with a pull-down menu. Check it and select Aperture:
Looks reasonable, but iTunes instantly complains ‘Your Aperture Library could not be found”:
The first attempt at fixing it, therefore, is to do what they suggest and ensure that you have your Aperture library set up for sharing. This is done by going into Aperture and clicking on Preferences…
Once you’re there, go to the “Previews” tab and look in the middle of that window:
What you want to select is any value that’s not “Never”, then quit Aperture to ensure that the change “takes”. You’ll see this:
Looks good. Now, go back into iTunes and try re-selecting Aperture as a source for your photos. If it works, congrats, you’re done.
If not, what worked for me was switching to a Aperture Library (since I didn’t have one, I created an empty one), then switching back. That can be easily done by choosing “Switch to Library” from “File”:
Since I don’t have any other than the standard library, I need to choose “Other/New…”, which pops up this window:
Click on “Create New…” and give it a memorable name:
It’ll take just a few seconds to switch to a new, blank, Aperture library. Now, switch back:
More likely than not, you just fixed the problem. Quit Aperture, then go back to iTunes, and hopefully this is what you’ll see:
If not, I’d suggest you check out this thread in the Apple support forums on the subject. Lots of interesting suggestions and discussion. And if something else works, please do post a note about it here for others to find. Thanks!
29 thoughts on “iTunes can’t find / share Aperture photo library?”
In case anyone is still using Aperture and encounters this problem, I have an alternate solution. In my case, things had been working well for years with MacBookAir, even for 1.2 years after migration to iPhone X. In last 2 weeks, I suddenly had prolonged sync and the “Aperture library not yet available” error. After changing to new empty library and back , trying to re-select which albums to sync, showed that syncing photos was unchecked. Rechecking brought iPhoto as the default. Changing to Aperture brought a spinning circle of grey lines that never ended.
After trying many approaches including those here I finally saw that I had 30 GB of 500 on my drive left free; usually running at ~1/2-full. This was in part to 2 files, an iPhoto Library and Photos Library.photoslibrary that took up 150 GB; all the more frustrating since I never use IPhoto or Photos.app. Deleting those 2 files and restarting/quitting Aperture let me see in iTunes the list of albums I couldn’t before. After selecting the ones I wanted and re-syncing the phone, all is working well now.
I hope this helps someone else out there. Cheers!
worked perfectly for me !
thanks !
I am streaming photos to apple TV and this trick works to recognize the original library I ever created. But I have multiple aperture libraries and apple TV can’t see the others even after opening that new library in aperture closing and reopening aperture several times.
Anyone else have this problem and how to solve it?
Will this previous post solve the problem?
Craig Sheppard said, on April 27, 2012 5:01 PM:
If this hint does not work for you, quit Aperture, then right click your Aperture library, and choose “show package contents”. Navigate to the iLife Shared folder, and delete the ApertureDatabaseTimestamp file.
Fire up Aperture again, quit it, and then it should appear in iTunes.
Read more at https://www.askdavetaylor.com/itunes_find_share_sync_aperture_3_thiphoto_library.html#gUS4QGvBew8BKXVX.99
Thank you! Just did a fresh install of Mountain Lion on my MBP and was stumped with this.
Thanks for the tip. Two years later, still works! 🙂 Much appreciated!
Fan – frikkin – tastic!!! Thanks for the info!!
If this hint does not work for you, quit Aperture, then right click your Aperture library, and choose “show package contents”. Navigate to the iLife Shared folder, and delete the ApertureDatabaseTimestamp file.
Fire up Aperture again, quit it, and then it should appear in iTunes.
Thanks Dave. It works 🙂
Thanks a ton, that helped me a lot 😉
Great! it works perfectly for me with the switch of library!
Thanks
Fixed the problem! Big thanks!
Thanks, that solved my problem!
Thanks. The Switch Library trick worked.
ah! thank god i solved this! the second solution worked really good. Thank you Dave
Thank you, Dave!!! The last suggestion about creating the dummy aperture library did the trick. I would never have thought of that one.
Mark D’Amato, Bellevue WA
iMac x2, iphone x3, MacBook Pro x1, Apple TV x1 all working on Timecapsule WiFi.
Thanks for being so thorough. I wish more problems were solved this easily with such clarity from people like you.
Switching to an empty library and back did the trick; thanks for the tip! Still having some issues but at least it’s working better than it did… whew.
brilliant! iPad now sync’d with Aperture. Thank you
Hi Dave,
that helped really!
Thanks a lot!!!
this worked perfectly to resolve the aperture 3.0.3 not sync’ing photos with my appletv … thanks!
My aperture library won’t even open. I have 9.5 GB worth of photo’s on my “Aperture Library” however it won’t let me open it for some reason? The icon on my dock just keep bouncing up and down?
When I click on the icon itself an icon always appears and says:
“The Application Aperture quit unexpectedly.
Mac OS X and other applications are not affected.
Click Relaunch to launch the application again. Click Report to see more details or send a report to Apple.”
I have tried both the Relaunch and sending the Report to Apple but still no luck.
Here are the more specific details,
Process: Aperture [1871]
Path: /Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/MacOS/Aperture
Identifier: com.apple.Aperture
Version: ??? (???)
Build Info: Aperture-908252102~1
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [85]
Date/Time: 2010-08-23 00:42:44.795 -0400
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Report Version: 6
Anonymous UUID: 97F28135-BEF1-4D08-9E09-4D782D274F0D
Exception Type: EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 0
Dyld Error Message:
Symbol not found: _BKItemKeywordsKey
Referenced from: /Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/MacOS/Aperture
Expected in: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BrowserKit.framework/Versions/A/BrowserKit
MY SYSTEM CONFIGURATION IS:
Model: MacBookPro4,1, BootROM MBP41.00C1.B03, 2 processors, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4 GHz, 2 GB
Graphics: GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce 8600M GT, spdisplays_pcie_device, 256 MB
Memory Module: global_name
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x8C), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.91.21)
Bluetooth: Version 2.1.9f10, 2 service, 0 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: AirPort, AirPort, en1
Serial ATA Device: FUJITSU MHY2200BH, 186.31 GB
Parallel ATA Device: MATSHITADVD-R UJ-867
USB Device: Built-in iSight, (null) mA
USB Device: USB to Serial-ATA bridge, (null) mA
USB Device: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad, (null) mA
USB Device: IR Receiver, (null) mA
USB Device: BRCM2046 Hub, (null) mA
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller, (null) mA
THANKS IN ADVANCE TO ALL OF YOU PEOPLE!
following those steps it still didn’t work for me.. however i’ve then tried repairing the aperture database which fixed the issue.. you can invoke a repair by closing aperture and then opening it again while holding down the option and command key..
You are a genious!
It worked great, thanks
Hey mate that done that trick and thank you!
Still stuck . I get The I pod “gary Bridger’s iPos”cannot be synced. The required file cannot be found.
i have managed to delete I photo 09 cache and it work with that down loading photos but does not with aperture 3 . help!
Been searching for the solution whole day, and this is the only tip on the web that actually works. Thanks a ton!!
Thanks for the hint. It solved the problem for me but only with a slight variation.
I created a dummy library as suggested then exited Aperture. Found the dummy library in the pictures folder and double clicked it to start Aperture with the new library. Exited Aperture again then double clicked on my original library. Problem disappeared!
Many thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
Thank you for this solution!
Thanks Dave, that tipped just saved my butt. I have a shiny new iPad, and I couldn’t get any photos on it, which was breaking my heart. 😉
FWIW, I had exactly the symptoms you described. I had to pull the “switch library” trick to get iTunes to see my Aperture library.
Thanks again!