I feel like this will free me from feeling forced to buy 2TB Apple devices, which becomes exorbitantly expensive!) My library has gotten so bloated that i am feeling very tempted to do a setup like this, where most of the devices use icloud and just a mac at home has the originals on an external ssd thats always connected. (it is important to me bc i feel like i rely on that for organizing and locating stuff in my library. Is there any delay in loading the thumbnails?

Are you able to force your icloud devices to download full versions for some albums? Or is it an all or nothing kind of thing unless you go image by image?Īlso, do you find Apple Photos to work snappy/fast with the library on an external ssd? The thing im worried about is the thumbnails appearing instantly when you scroll from the bottom to top of the library quickly by dragging the scroll bar. I have it set this way on my Mac but to optimise storage on my iPad and iPhone, which means that all images are accessible on those devices only as tiny files until selected, when the file will be downloaded temporarily in full resolution to the device, given the availability of a wi-fi or mobile signal.Īh glad to hear it is easy. Its the first option you find when Preferences is opened in Photos as shown below. It is also very easy indeed to choose or exclude full resolution images for storage on a Mac. Firstly it is dead easy to include an external drive to be backed up by Time Machine as others have pointed out. Restoring from the backup recovered the albums. (FWIW the albums had also disappeared on, and did not reappear by downloading a fresh copy of the library from ). This was a few years ago and a known bug affecting a few, and which I believe is now cured, but the experience did convince me it was worth backing up my Photos library locally. I have twice restored a complete iCloud Photos Library, with originals, from a Time Machine backup after all my albums (not the photos) disappeared. There may also be a copy of all the masters within the Photos Library file if you have chosen 'Download originals to this Mac' in the Photos > Preferences > iCloud tab. Yes the masters are in iCloud if you use iCloud Photos. Also that you have an iCloud storage plan with enough space for all the photos in your iCloud Photos system libraries.) (That is, assuming that your laptop is connected to the Internet long enough that it has time to upload locally-imported photos to iCloud. I'm not sure – but if you're using Photos with iCloud, I believe that the master copies of your photos are held on Apple's servers ('in iCloud'). Will this work without having to wake the mac/log in? (Say, if you are traveling for a few months, but changes are made to the photos library via icloud from your laptop?)

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