How to offline an album in Photos Mac.

Hi juliendotme,

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities! I see you have a question about the Photos app on your Mac, and I'd like do what I can to help out.

If I'm understanding correctly, you're using iCloud Photos, and have photos optimized on your Mac. You'd like to download the full resolution photos to your Mac before traveling.

If this is correct, you don't need to do one at a time. This article shows the steps to get all the originals downloaded to your Mac.

Download iCloud photos and videos

If I misunderstood, please reply back with some additional information. Please don't include any personal information.

Thanks!

The option to download selected albums is gone from Photos in Photos 5 on Catalina.

If you need to prevent certain albums from getting optimized while traveling, you could keep a small photos library that is completely offline.

Can you escalate this feature?

You can send a feature request to Apple using the feedback form, see: Feedback - Photos - Apple

I already sent feedback when Catalina came out.

You rarely want keep the original downloaded of your archive, but only the recent ones. @Starr.

I am using iCloud to keep my devices in sync, not to save storage. If the photos are not stored locally but optimized, it is very complicated to make backups of my photos and my Photos Library. The Time Machine backup or clones will be missing many photos. My iCloud Photos Library is so small, that I do not need "optimize Storage", and the archive of all photos is on external volumes and can be easily backed up by cloning it to another volume.

But even with "Optimize Storage" disabled, iCloud can be dragging the feeds about downloading all photos. Using "Download originals to this Mac" for selected albums has been the only way to ensure that all new photos have been downloaded before making a backup.