Apple Intelligence is now available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac!

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Turning on iCloud—iPhone photos have already been imported to Mac Photos—will my photos be duplicated?

I have over 20,000 photos on my iPhone and I have already imported them to Photos on my Mac Book laptop. (I plugged in my iPhone to my laptop and manually pressed import in my Photos app.) If I turn on iCloud, will the photos in my Photos app on my computer be uploaded to iCloud and be duplicated with the same photos that are on my iPhone?





Posted on Jun 26, 2020 6:50 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 27, 2020 6:56 AM

If everything works as it should, then I believe it should recognise the duplicates and not import them for a second time. However, I have seen various reports from other people I think not doing this.


You may wish to create a new library and import the photos through the cloud to that, at the same time as keeping your previous library in a safe stored location, just in case.

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 27, 2020 6:56 AM in response to mjadse

If everything works as it should, then I believe it should recognise the duplicates and not import them for a second time. However, I have seen various reports from other people I think not doing this.


You may wish to create a new library and import the photos through the cloud to that, at the same time as keeping your previous library in a safe stored location, just in case.

Jun 27, 2020 8:43 AM in response to Winston Churchill

Thank you Winston. I also saw various reports from other people getting duplicates. I was hoping someone would know if Apple has fixed that and that it really does work now as it should.


I did turn on iCloud with my 20,000 photos already in Photos, and it started to UPLOAD those 20,000 to iCloud (it uploaded about 3,000.) It may have been just comparing them, but I decided not to take the chance of getting 20k duplicates, so I turned it off and created a new library to import the photos through iCloud. I have been keeping my iPhone plugged in to power, and I plugged my computer into an ethernet for the best Internet, but It is going VERY slowly.


(I can't tell for sure, but it seems like there are no duplicates of the 3,000 uploaded from my experiment. I'll try to confirm after all 20k are done.)

Turning on iCloud—iPhone photos have already been imported to Mac Photos—will my photos be duplicated?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.