Photosream alternative

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Level 1

24 points

Photosream alternative

I have tens of thousands of photos on my Mac that are backed up to a HDD rather than using iCloud. My photo stream service is going to be turned off, what is the best way to automatically sync iPhone photos at full resolution to my iMac? If I turn on iCloud on the Mac is don't have sufficient iCloud storage and not do I want to pay to increase iCloud storage because I don't want all of the photos on the mac uploaded to the iCloud plus with the intent speed it would take weeks or months to upload from my Mac. Photostream was great service and it is such a shame it is being switched off.

Posted on Jun 28, 2023 12:31 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,237 points

Jun 28, 2023 1:09 AM in response to Cooltt

On your Mac you can use several phot libraries. Only one of your Photos Libraries can be enabled to sync with iCloud Photos, the library you enable as your system photos library.

To replace My Photo Stream without having to pay for additional iCloud storage you could create a small library, small enough to fit into the free 5GB of cloud storage, It could sync with your iPhone to download the new photos and videos automatically. You w ill get a better syncing than with My Photo Stream, as iCloud will sync also the added metadata, adjustments, albums, faces etc and can sync Portrait Mode photos, Live Photos, videos. Adjustments will be updated across all devices, losslessly.

The only problem will be, that you can only have one library on your iPhone or iPad. So the favorite photos you want to see on all devices will have to be in your iCloud Photos Library as well.

I have used this method for many years now, a small iCloud Photos Library with all new photos and the photos I want to see on all devices, and larger archives of all photos on external volumes, regularly backed up by cloning them to backup drives.

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Photosream alternative

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