Smart Albums in Photos to iCloud

Hello,

I find this : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7560340?answerId=30200008022#30200008022

A script to copy a smart album to a normal one. Perhaps this script can be adapted to browse all library searching smart album (I don't know if the album has a type accessible through the applescript) ?

Smart albums do not sync with iCloud to iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod), probably because the iOD devices cannot display smart albums, the cannot even show the titles, description, keywords. And www.icloud.com is equally limited. But iCloud is storing the smart albums. When you sync two Macs with iCloud the smart albums will sync between the Macs.

I do not duplicate all smart albums as standard albums to sync to iCloud, only the new that are most important to see. It is just too much bother to keep updating the standard albums.

I see no way to use an AppleScript to create automatically an album from a smart album. The Apple Script dictionary for Photos does not show any commands for smart albums, only standard albums.

And here is now a link to the User Tip: GregBZH35's Script: Create Standard Albums from Smart Albums to Sync with iCloud to iOS Devices

I linked it also from our index page: Thematic Index to Photos for Mac related User Tips- Apple Community

When I tested the script, it working well, as long as the smart album does not have too many items. I have a few very large smart albums (10000 items or more), that are causing Photos to hang and the script will quit with a timeout error.

You may want to include a test for the size of the album before trying to copy it.

A question for you : is it possible to test if an album is a smart album ?

I found no way to test if an album is a smart album or a standard album. The Photos Scripting dictionary has only one class for albums, and it includes smart albums and standard albums. The class "album" inherits only the properties of "container": id, name, and parent., and these do not tell us, if an album is a smart album or a standard album. You could append a suffix "_Smart" to all smart albums, so you can test for the name.

hello Léonie, no pb ! it's the goal of a forum.

My next step is to check photo in the albums to avoid a delete of the entire album because it can be long if there is lot's of photo to add.

A question for you : is it possible to test if an album is a smart album ?

For the first point, I want to compare photo one by one & remove or add in the target album.

but I have issues when I try to use the "contains", I've got an error saying a media items is not a list

... I'm still working on it...

good Idea for the _Smart, it will be easier to find them => I will do another version with that part.

That is a very good solution to copy selected folders of albums. I would like to copy your script to a user tip, if you do not mind. As a user tip it will be easier to find so we can point to it.

Hello,

below a proposal, this is creating a folder named "SmartFolder" & doing a copy-paste of all abums in folder with "<!> in it (changing smart album to regular one). You can create this script as a schedule one after that.

Hope it help a little.

tell application "Photos"
	
	set allFolderNames to name of folders
	tell folder "SmartAlbums" to if not (exists) then make new folder named "SmartAlbums"
	
	set targetFolder to (get folder "SmartAlbums")
	
	repeat with FolderName in allFolderNames
		if FolderName contains "<!>" then
			set allAlbumFromFolder to (get albums of folder FolderName)
			repeat with albumToSync in allAlbumFromFolder
				set srcAlbumName to name of albumToSync
				--log "Album : " & srcAlbumName
				
				tell album srcAlbumName in targetFolder to if exists then delete
				set targetAlbum to make new album named srcAlbumName at targetFolder
				add (get media items of albumToSync) to targetAlbum
				
			end repeat
		end if
	end repeat
end tell

The script, compiled, as an application, has been added to my tutorial site, Old Toad's Tutorials: www.oldtoad.net/TT/No.P01.html, for downloading as an application.