First iCloud Photo Library Sync

Question

First iCloud Photo Library Sync

Hello,

My mom has both an iPhone and an iPad.

She's had them both for a couple years. In that time, she's been taking photos, screenshots, videos on both devices separately.

Started her with the free 5 GB iCloud on the devices. iCloud was never used for any backup, photo syncing or anything like that. It was only used for contacts, safari and calendar syncing.

Decided to switch her up to a fully integrated iCloud setup. So I purchased the 200 GB iCloud plan. I would like both devices to be backed up on iCloud and both devices to sync her Photo Library.

I'm having some trouble with the iCloud photo library:

Since both devices were used differently, they both obviously have different photos and videos in both devices' respective photo libraries. When I turn on iCloud Photo Library on the iPhone and also turn it on on the iPad, do the photo libraries just merge into one? Is it better to turn on iCloud Photo Library on one device first and then when it's done uploading, turn it on on the other device? How does it work?
Let's say she has 80 GB of storage taken up by "Photos", once they are uploaded to iCloud and I turn on "Optimize device storage" will I see the reduction in local storage space immediately? Or does it take time to show up? What kind of reduction percentage are we talking? Does it also apply to the iPad?
Both devices are each 128 GB, and the iCloud storage space is 200 GB, is it fair to assume that turning on "Optimize device storage" will allow both devices to have the same content as on iCloud (albeit at a lower resolution), even though the online content is around 200 GB and the local device only has 128 GB?

Any other tips or opinions would be appreciated. I remember jumping onboard the iCloud Photo Library bandwagon when it first came out, and saying it was unstable is an understatement. It's expected from new products a few years back. Has it improved to a level of useable reliability in (almost) 2019.

Thanks a lot,

Nick

Posted on Dec 17, 2018 1:50 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

jeremy_v

Community Specialist

Dec 19, 2018 4:00 PM in response to Nicolas Online

Hello, Nicolas Online.

Looks like you have some questions about merging photos on your mother's iOS devices. The iCloud Photo Library will merge photos of whatever the Apple ID the iOS devices are using. So if you'd like both devices to have the same set of photos, you'll need to use the same Apple ID on both. You can turn on both devices to do the upload, but the speed which depends on your router, may be slower when uploading both devices since your Wi-Fi will have to split the speed. Once the photos have uploaded to iCloud, you'll see the reduced version on the device.

There isn't a way to gauge how much each photo would be optimized by percentage. iPad will have the Optimize Storage for iCloud. Your third question would be correct. iCloud Photo Library won't take into account of your device storage space, only what the Photos are going to take. The iCloud Backups would be separate. For example, let's say you have 80gigs worth of photos and 20 gigs for device backups. This would total 100gigs of your iCloud space and not the full 128gigs that your device has. iCloud Photo Library is reliable, however you always want to make sure that you keep a backup of your data.

Here are some great articles related to iCloud Photo Library:

Set up and use iCloud Photos

Get help with iCloud Photos

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Cheers!

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