How would I:
In other words, keep old photos in the icloud upto a certain date, then add new photos to the icloud, without the old photos taking up space on my MacBook?
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 15.6
iCloud Photos is a sync service, and not a library.
It syncs the photos everywhere sharing the Apple Account and iCloud Photos.
It doesn’t have the concept of partitioned use.
Nor does deleting photos on the Mac do what you want. It’ll delete those photos everywhere.
Once re-enabled, iCloud Photos will then cache photos from iCloud in local storage, undoing your deletion efforts.
You could create a second local photo album for the photos you want to archive, and keep that separate, but I’m guessing the underlying issue here is insufficient storage on the Mac.
Rather than your proposed solution, could you provide some background information, maybe what problems are you trying to solve, or what limits are you working around, or other details that might help us with identifying options or alternatives?
Preserve icloud photos and only keep new photos on macbook
