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I have tens of thousands of photos in my system library on my Mac. Sonoma OS 14. I don't WANT to share ALL my photos with iCloud!. I only want to share an handful of photos in 1 Shared Album.
How can I do this?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Mac mini, macOS 14.7
Many of us use multiple Photos Libraries. I sync my Favorites Library that has pictures copied from my Nikon Library and from my Old Family Picture Library, etc. There is no accidental swapping of the System Library designation. The System Library is the only Library that can be connected to iCloud. The System Library should be connected at all times, so I use the internal drive of my MacBook. but Libraries can be located on external drives as long as they are Mac formatted, directly connected, and not networked or cloud or NAS or stuff like that.
The System Library is designated with a button in Photos Settings>General. iCloud is turned on in Settings>iCloud.
This setting is manual only. The setting stays with the Library.
Since my iPhone and iPad are also connected to iCloud, photos and screenshots taken by them get synced to iCloud and the Mac, and vice-versa. So in addition to copying pictures from Nikon to Favorites, I copy new pictures and screenshots to an iPictures Library. I delete the less interesting ones from Favorites.
Those of us who use multiple Libraries use the trusted 3rd party app PowerPhotos ($30) to make copying between Libraries simpler. PowerPhotos preserves album structure in copies, so I can copy whole albums at a time and keep them together. I keep PowerPhotos open all the time, and I use it to switch from working with one Library to another. You can also just double click on a Library to open it.
Lots of people do this, and I don't think any of us have suddenly found our entire archive suddenly appearing on iCloud!
Many of us use multiple Photos Libraries. I sync my Favorites Library that has pictures copied from my Nikon Library and from my Old Family Picture Library, etc. There is no accidental swapping of the System Library designation. The System Library is the only Library that can be connected to iCloud. The System Library should be connected at all times, so I use the internal drive of my MacBook. but Libraries can be located on external drives as long as they are Mac formatted, directly connected, and not networked or cloud or NAS or stuff like that.
The System Library is designated with a button in Photos Settings>General. iCloud is turned on in Settings>iCloud.
This setting is manual only. The setting stays with the Library.
Since my iPhone and iPad are also connected to iCloud, photos and screenshots taken by them get synced to iCloud and the Mac, and vice-versa. So in addition to copying pictures from Nikon to Favorites, I copy new pictures and screenshots to an iPictures Library. I delete the less interesting ones from Favorites.
Those of us who use multiple Libraries use the trusted 3rd party app PowerPhotos ($30) to make copying between Libraries simpler. PowerPhotos preserves album structure in copies, so I can copy whole albums at a time and keep them together. I keep PowerPhotos open all the time, and I use it to switch from working with one Library to another. You can also just double click on a Library to open it.
Lots of people do this, and I don't think any of us have suddenly found our entire archive suddenly appearing on iCloud!
You can create a new library, make it the system library and sync with iCloud. Then, you can add whatever photos you wish to sync across your devices.
Thanks. Would you have a recommendation of a link about switching libraries? I will carefully read the behavior when switching between libraries. I need to be sure that opening one of the large Libraries I keep on my external 4TB disk doesn't accidentally become the 'System Library' and start synching photos, (or worse my terabyte of short kung fu videos :-) So far I have avoided the problem by just not turning on iCloud synching for 'anything', except my calendar.
Thank you Richard! That was super helpful!
I will start experimenting with this.
And the website for PowerPhotos describes tasks I would expect to need to do but had 'assumed' I could just drag and drop albums and libraries without needing it.
I have a laptop that accumulates class videos, and a desktop that accumulates tutorial videos, and two iPhones and a Sony camera that accumulate pictures. I regularly upload them to my System Library to clear space on them. I sometimes make Albums of specific subjects of these media. I sometimes copy Albums to specific folders on my main external drive. If I change that flow and upload directly to an appropriate destination library I can save a step.
chillypop wrote: … tasks I would expect to need to do but had 'assumed' I could just drag and drop albums and libraries without needing it.
Drag & Drop has limited support in Photos. I will import files that way, and it so far initiates the normal Import process that checks for duplicates, etc. But dragging (or ⌘-c copying) from Photos may get you an original, an edited version, a thumbnail, or a preview -- exactly which is not documented and may change from one OS to another. Even within an OS, how drag and drop works may depend on the context. Photos isn't a file system-- it's an image system, so assumptions based on how Finder (or Explorer) works may not apply. If I try something that's not supported, I do a lot of checking before depending on it.
Restricting iCloud Photo sharing to a single album on Mac
