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Looking for some of my older photos on my mac I noticed that many were blacked out, in one case one whole year's worth. The missing photos appear on my iphone and ipad and they are on icloud. I can't figure out how to force the mac to sync with the cloud for these older photos. Sync with new photos is working just fine between the cloud and all three devices.
Any help would be appreciated.
Mac mini 2018 or later
Hi William Dalzell,
Thank you for using the Apple Support Communities! I understand your older iCloud Photos are not updating properly on your Mac, but they do appear without any issues on your iOS devices. I'd like to help out.
Let's start with some basics first. If you try restarting your Mac: How to turn your Mac on or off - Apple Support, and connecting to a different network: Connect your Mac to the internet - Apple Support, do your photos appear normally? I would also recommend making sure your macOS is fully updated: How to update the software on your Mac - Apple Support.
If the behavior remains, I will have you test a new user account next, to isolate if this is a user-specific issue, or a system-wide issue. Here’s how: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac - Apple Support.
Keep me posted on the results. Regards.
Hi William Dalzell,
Thank you for using the Apple Support Communities! I understand your older iCloud Photos are not updating properly on your Mac, but they do appear without any issues on your iOS devices. I'd like to help out.
Let's start with some basics first. If you try restarting your Mac: How to turn your Mac on or off - Apple Support, and connecting to a different network: Connect your Mac to the internet - Apple Support, do your photos appear normally? I would also recommend making sure your macOS is fully updated: How to update the software on your Mac - Apple Support.
If the behavior remains, I will have you test a new user account next, to isolate if this is a user-specific issue, or a system-wide issue. Here’s how: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac - Apple Support.
Keep me posted on the results. Regards.
Thanks for the info. Fortunately my photos are back now. The original problem occurred on a late 2013 MacBook Pro and right after I made the post I moved to a new Mac mini and since I migrated to the new machine from a Time Machine backup, the same photos were missing on the Mac mini as well. I just checked and the new machine has updated to iCloud nicely and I appear to have all the old photos now. As for the old MacBook Pro, the problem had been going on for some time so there was apparently something wrong there – it is on its way to recycling now though so we can't explore it any farther. Thanks again.
icloud photos missing from mac
