Hi! I optimized my MacBook's storage in settings, and when I synced, photos that weren't in iCloud were deleted from my MacBook. How can I recover them? There were about 50 gigabytes of unique photos. Please help me recover them.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.6
markwmsn wrote: That would happen on an iPhone or iPad, but have you ever heard of that happening on a Mac?
Oops-- kind of knee-jerk response, there. That was all about the "From My Mac" pictures on iDevices, and as you say, it doesn't apply, here.
I wonder if those 50GB of pictures were on iCloud.com before the Optimize choice. One possibility is that Julia_Silnyagina is looking at a completely different Library than she thinks she is.
Hey Julia! Look at the Library chooser to see if you have any Libraries you didn't know about! Close Photos and option-click the Photos icon to bring up the Chooser:
This wil show the path to any other Libraries you have. If you find you have others, you can go there and double click on the Library to open it and see what's there.
I can't imagine why 50 GB of pictures would disappear from a Mac Library just because you turn on Optimize. They might be pictures that can't Optimize because they've lost their connection with Originals, but that doesn't explain why they would disappear locally. So maybe they're just hiding…
Let us know what you find!
markwmsn wrote: That would happen on an iPhone or iPad, but have you ever heard of that happening on a Mac?
Oops-- kind of knee-jerk response, there. That was all about the "From My Mac" pictures on iDevices, and as you say, it doesn't apply, here.
I wonder if those 50GB of pictures were on iCloud.com before the Optimize choice. One possibility is that Julia_Silnyagina is looking at a completely different Library than she thinks she is.
Hey Julia! Look at the Library chooser to see if you have any Libraries you didn't know about! Close Photos and option-click the Photos icon to bring up the Chooser:
This wil show the path to any other Libraries you have. If you find you have others, you can go there and double click on the Library to open it and see what's there.
I can't imagine why 50 GB of pictures would disappear from a Mac Library just because you turn on Optimize. They might be pictures that can't Optimize because they've lost their connection with Originals, but that doesn't explain why they would disappear locally. So maybe they're just hiding…
Let us know what you find!
Some pictures transferred from a computer are meant to be on the phone temporarily, so they can be viewed in Photos but they can't be modified by Photos. Those pictures can't be transferred to iCloud. That's why there may be some operations that produce a warning about those being at risk. So if you’re missing pictures that were transferred from a computer, then you should look on the computer for the originals.
Is this what has happened?
Hi! Thanks for the recommendation. I tried opening the Photos app this way, but unfortunately, it only has one photo library (the system one). It turned out that when syncing, my MacBook created a mirror copy of everything I had in iCloud, and the photos that were previously on my MacBook weren't in iCloud and were deleted (replaced by photos from iCloud). If there's any other way to get everything back, I'd be very grateful for your help!
That would happen on an iPhone or iPad, but have you ever heard of that happening on a Mac?
Photos were deleted from my MacBook after synchronization
