Indesign can't access mac photos album structure in "placing" dialogue

Question

Hi All,

Not sure if the problem is with osx or indesign. Placing dialog used to work; not anymore after updating osx

when placing images into indesign (commmand d) then selecting images in the finder like window (technically speaking this might be the ilifemdiabrowser plugin from apple) , i cannot access the photos library album strucutre anymore (it used to be a seperate menue on top in the dialog box. When going to movies (filme) i do get the menu where i can choose the subfolders, with images (bilder) it does not work.

Further, when trying to choose media (top menu on placing window) it cant access it. I suppose it is some kind of issue with adobe not getting access to the os photos system. I tried solving it in the mac settings, but it is not possible to grant indesign access to the photos library. When installing indesign i got a message asking if indesign could access downloads and desktop, but it didnt ask for other folders or places.

Same issue with photoshop. Other software on the mac (pages, word) are able to access it correctly, therefore showing the album structure from photos.

This used to work on Mac osx 12.6 and Indesign 2023

Just updated to OSX 15.4.1 and the problem occured (tried both indesign 2023 and indesign 2025)

Any ideas are much appreciated.

Frans v.d. Geest · Accepted Answer

You have to set InDesign to allow full disk acces in the System settings of Mac OS.

Open your Mac's System Preferences and click Security & Privacy. Under the Privacy tab, choose Full Disk Access from the sidebar. Click the lock icon in the bottom left of the window and enter your macOS password. Ensure that your desired app appears in the list.

leo.r · Answer

Other software on the mac (pages, word) are able to access it correctly, therefore showing the album structure from photos.

By @Angelic_self1109

And how do you access it from Word?

To insert a picture, Word has a separate Photo Browser menu where indeed I can see the Photos library structure. But it's not the standard Open/Save dialog.

When using the Picture from File menu, which opens the standard navigation dialog, the choices I see are the same as in InDesign. That is, the Photos library structure cannot be accessed from either Word or InDesign.

Or is it different on your machine?

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