How to get phots from iphone to mac via icloud?

I have had iphone and mac for more than 10 years, and one of the biggest pain points is getting photos from the iphone onto the mac. I really miss the simplicity of plugging the phone into the mac, and dragging and dropping the photos.

Usually I have to do it one by one with airdrop, or via the import function on lightroom classic + a cable.

In hope of finding a better way, I purchased 2TB icloud storage, and enable the full photo backups on the iphone.

I was assuming the photos might magically sync to the mac, but if I open photos on the mac, there is nothing there. Seems the mac and iphone have no way to sync photos. Maybe I need a third party app?

I assume I could open icloud in a browser, and download the photos that way, but:

1. it would be slow and error prone. If I try too many photos at once, and there is an interruption, I have to start again.
2. every time I open icloud in a browser, it says "your apple id is being used on a new device", and I tediously have to enter the code. Every time. I greatly regret enabling 2FA, and am seriously thinking of creating a new apple account without 2FA and migrating everything across.
3. Icloud open in the browser says "you turned off icloud data web access" and I have no idea what this means or how I fix it. It says "You can also turn on Access iCloud Data on the Web on a Mac running Ventura 13.1 or later. Go to System Settings  Simon H  iCloud." However, I cant find anything on the mac which says "system settings", There is only "system preferences". In system preferences, there is "icloud" but there is nothing like enabling web access.