Windows 10 Photos App Won’t Open? – Try this

Windows 10 Photo app, also known as The Photos app, is an application that allows users to view images, organise photographs, photo share, edit video clips as well as edit photographs.

It is not as comprehensive as an application like Photoshop, but for basic photo editing, it is sufficient and includes tools such as:

  • Crop and rotate.
  • Exposure and colour correction.
  • Red-eye correction.
  • mage noise reduction.
  • Spot and blemish removal.

The app can gather photographs and images from any device, PC or phone and accumulates them into one place so you can find what you need without searching through all your hard drives individually.

A technological God-send for the world where documenting everything with photographs is the norm.

So have you ever tried to open the Photos app and it just won’t do anything? Or it hangs there for five seconds and then crashes? Frustrating isn’t it?

Well, here are some basic fixes you can try before you Hulk smash your computer to pieces.

Windows 10 Photos App won’t open – Troubleshooting

If you’re finding that the Windows 10 Photos app will not open on your laptop, you can usually fix this by a quick force stop and re-open. This works in the easy majority of cases for the Photos app.

When it doesn’t, you may need to troubleshoot things a little further, and even re-install the Photos app on your device. Follow our guide for a more in-depth look at what you should do to fix this issue.

Force Quit and Reload – Single-Instance App

Windows 10 photo app is a ‘single instance app’ which means that it only runs one instance at a time, you cannot open the programme so it is running twice.

This is very likely what you are trying to do, probably without even knowing it. You may have tried to run the programme and got a little impatient like me, so tried to open it again?

You can’t do this with the Photos App. You need to ‘Force Quit’ the programme completely, wait a few seconds and then try to reload it only once this time.

So again, click to run and then breath, it will load, it might just not be as fast as we all would like.

Troubleshoot the Photos app

Windows-photo-app-3-2

Windows has an in-built troubleshooter for times when you try to load something and it either just won’t boot or crashes, it is called Windows Store Apps troubleshooter.

You can use the troubleshooter to identify possible issues with any app you may be hitting a wall with – it doesn’t just work for the Photos app, as it works well to fix your Windows 10 Mail app problems too.

So if you have tried to load the Photos app and it just isn’t working your next best step is to use the troubleshooter, you can do this by using the following steps:

  1. Go to the search bar on your desktop.
  2. Type ‘Trouble-shooting’ into the search bar.
  3. Select the option ‘Trouble-shooting.’
  4. Click on ‘View All’ in the top left-hand corner of the page.
  5. Click on ‘Windows Store Apps.’
  6. Follow the troubleshooting advice provided.
Windows-photo-app

Force uninstall & reinstall Photos app

If you have run a troubleshoot and followed the advice given but it still doesn’t work the next thing you can do is a little more technical, but it is worth doing to fix the issues.

It is recommended that you uninstall the Photos app using the Windows Shell power command. On Windows 10, the PowerShell is a cross-platform tool designed to run scripts and commands that allow a user to change to any system settings, it can also troubleshoot issues, automate tasks and manage features on your computer.

Sounds a little too nerdy right? Well, that’s where we can help you, so follow the steps provided and don’t worry about having to be a wizard to make it work because that’s what we do.

  1. Open the ‘Start’ menu on your desktop.
  2. In the search bar type ‘Windows PowerShell.’
  3. Select the option that says ‘Run as Administrator.’
  4. To uninstall the Photo app use the command below in bold, you can copy and paste it from here, but you should type it manually so you don’t have any characters that shouldn’t be in the command otherwise it won’t work.

Command One: Get-appxpackage *Microsoft.Windows.Photos* | remove-appxpackage

After you have performed the steps above, you can reinstall the Photos app from the Windows Store, once installed, run the programme as normal and this should have fixed any issues you may have been experiencing previously.

Get technical

So you have reinstalled the app and it still doesn’t work? This is where we have to get a little more technical but if you follow our guide you should be able to do it with no problems.

  1. Open ‘Task Manager’ to do this Press CTRL+Shift+ESC.
  2. Select File > Run New Task.
  3. Go to ‘Create this task with administrative privileges and ensure that there is a tick mark next to this option.
  4. Type in CMD.
  5. Select OK.
  6. Type the next two commands (provided in bold below) in the CMD prompt each time you have the option.

Command One: Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers |Where-Object {$_.InstallLocation -like “*SystemsApps*”} For Each
Command Two: {Add–AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($.InstallLocation) \AppXManifest.xml”}

task-manager
Step 1 – Open Task Manager
tasks-processing
Step 2 – Manage Tasks
create-new-task
Step 3 – Create task

Close the CMD window and reload the programme to see if your issue is now fixed. If not, you can create a new user account following Windows help instructions to see if this is a problem with your account.

Conclusion

So now you know some things you can do to fix Windows 10 Photos App when it just won’t open. Hopefully, we have helped fix your issue and you are now back to searching for your next great photo to upload.

Although you don’t have to be a tech genius to fix certain issues, it is good to have a basic idea of how to do these things when your apps are playing up, it helps to save time in the future, and if you are still stuck, you can always hit us up for the next fix because we probably have it.

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Author

Tracy

An avid gamer, historian and all-round literature buff, Tracy is our go-to when it comes to using different devices. MacOS, iOS, Android, Windows, Linux or whatever else, Tracy's got a device that runs it (she's even got an old Blackberry laying around somewhere!).

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