Hello
I have 10,000+ photographs stored in my Apple iCloud today. If I use my Time Machine backup to revert to how my iMac was configured six months ago, will my iCloud still retain ALL of my current photographs?
At a guess, it will - because my iPhone and iPad Pro will still want access to them!
Just looking for peace-of-mind!
Earlier Mac models
léonie wrote:
Restoring your Mac to an earlier system version will not erase your iCloud data and the iCloud Photos Library.
Phew! 😅 Thank you for confirming!
Are you planning to let your Mac sync again with iCloud Photos after you restored it from the backup? If you enable iCloud Photos for the restored iCloud Photos Library from the older backup, iCloud Photos will merge the old library into the current iCloud Photos Library. This may create duplicate albums and duplicate photos, because the older edited versions will appear along the newer edited versions.
If your goal is not to recover older, lost photos but just want to restore other data, you could just create a new, empty Photos Library and let it sync with iCloud Photos instead of uploading the old library in addition to the current Photos Library.
At the moment, I decided to do nothing more than reinstall macOS Ventura from Apple Recovery. All seems to be well!
Thank you for your helpful comments.
léonie wrote:
Restoring your Mac to an earlier system version will not erase your iCloud data and the iCloud Photos Library.
Phew! 😅 Thank you for confirming!
Are you planning to let your Mac sync again with iCloud Photos after you restored it from the backup? If you enable iCloud Photos for the restored iCloud Photos Library from the older backup, iCloud Photos will merge the old library into the current iCloud Photos Library. This may create duplicate albums and duplicate photos, because the older edited versions will appear along the newer edited versions.
If your goal is not to recover older, lost photos but just want to restore other data, you could just create a new, empty Photos Library and let it sync with iCloud Photos instead of uploading the old library in addition to the current Photos Library.
At the moment, I decided to do nothing more than reinstall macOS Ventura from Apple Recovery. All seems to be well!
Thank you for your helpful comments.
Restoring your Mac to an earlier system version will not erase your iCloud data and the iCloud Photos Library.
Are you planning to let your Mac sync again with iCloud Photos after you restored it from the backup? If you enable iCloud Photos for the restored iCloud Photos Library from the older backup, iCloud Photos will merge the old library into the current iCloud Photos Library. This may create duplicate albums and duplicate photos, because the older edited versions will appear along the newer edited versions.
If your goal is not to recover older, lost photos but just want to restore other data, you could just create a new, empty Photos Library and let it sync with iCloud Photos instead of uploading the old library in addition to the current Photos Library.
Given the chance of an errant re-sync or deletion, have backups of your iCloud data, including Photos:
iCloud errors here should not arise, but I'd also rather not lose both six months of data and ten thousand photos.
As a caution, be aware that you have to use the Restore routine in Time Machine-- you can't drag a Library in to your computer like you can with files. You can see this:
Time Machine Restores a Photos Library - Apple Community
Hello again, Richard 🙂
I noticed elsewhere that you had advised someone to open Photos when holding down the Options key.
When I did this myself, this is what I saw:-
Can I, should I, remove the two "rogue" entries? If so, how do I do that?
Your advice, please!
The path should be just below that dialog. Find each, double click to open in Photos, and see if there's anything there you want to preserve. There's nothing wrong with deleting a Library if it's just junk. It won't affect the others.
The System Library is the one that can connect to iCloud and that is available to Safari and other apps you choose. If that one turns out to be a junk Library, then you can trash it and, in Photos' Settings>General, you can designate another Library as the System Library.
I hope you find treasures!
Thank you once more, Richard. Interestingly, I did find two treasured items which I thought were lost forever!
I have now trashed the two unwanted Libraries and am left only with the System Library. All looks good, as far as I can tell.
However, I'd like to 'weed' my library - get rid of 'screenshots' (which I had deliberately put there - but to keep them elsewhere if easily done) and eradicate any duplicates so that I can recover some of my 200GB iCloud space. It is almost full!
Advice requested please.
Archive or make copies of the information you store in iCloud - Apple Support
That is a VERY informative and helpful article. Thank you for sharing it.
Is there a "list" of all such Apple articles which you will share with me? If so, please point me in the right direction!
Thanks.
AnotherGrandy wrote: … I'd like to 'weed' my library - get rid of 'screenshots' (which I had deliberately put there - but to keep them elsewhere if easily done) and eradicate any duplicates so that I can recover some of my 200GB iCloud space. It is almost full!
Smart Albums are your friends. To collect screenshots, you can do this:
It might miss some screenshots, and it may include some that are not. For me, it seems to confuse some scans with screenshots, but it's mostly right.
If you have pictures you want to keep, but which you don't want popping up all the time, then you can make another Library and put them there. You can even keep this other Library on an APFS formatted external drive, so it doesn't take up room on your Mac's drive, either. I have a number of archive Libraries for my Wife's family, my old family pictures, work pictures, and so on. The best, the ones that I want to view and share, are in a Favorites Library that's my System Library. Those are the only ones using up iCloud storage.
You can create a new Library with the Library Chooser you used before. You can use File>Import to bring in pictures from your System Library. Unfortunately, Photos' Import routine forces you to look through an entire Library for the pictures you want-- it doesn't show folders and albums from the selected Library, just the entire Library.
Most of us who routinely use multiple Libraries use the trusted 3rd party app PowerPhotos ($40) to help out. PowerPhotos lets you copy pictures, albums, and even folders from one Library to another, while showing the Library with its folder and album organization. It also has a powerful duplicate finder, and it does a lot more. I keep PowerPhotos open on my Mac any time I'm using Photos.
What do you think?
Most of us who routinely use multiple Libraries use the trusted 3rd party app PowerPhotos ($40) to help out. PowerPhotos lets you copy pictures, albums, and even folders from one Library to another, while showing the Library with its folder and album organization. It also has a powerful duplicate finder, and it does a lot more. I keep PowerPhotos open on my Mac any time I'm using Photos.
What do you think?
I've considered all you have said ..... and have now bought PowerPhotos software!
Thank you for all your help and advice. 😊
AnotherGrandy wrote:
Is there a "list" of all such Apple articles which you will share with me? If so, please point me in the right direction!
Apple has an immense library of support articles published. I’m not sure how useful a list would even be.
What to do?
Use the DuckDuckGo keyword site:support.apple.com to target the search and then add your keywords of interest onto the search query.
Google also has a site keyword, if you’re still using that search engine.
Example results:
OK. Thank you. 😊
Photos and Time Machine query
