Catalina Photos: how to "Download Originals to this Mac" for a single album

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Catalina Photos: how to "Download Originals to this Mac" for a single album

In Mojave Photos, you used to be able to right-click on an album and select "Download Originals to this Mac" for that single album. This option does not exist in Catalina anymore.

This was absolutely essential, because I often need to "manually do something" to each photo in a large album (hundreds of photos). For example, I might want to select which photos I want to keep or delete. In order to do that, I need to see the full resolution photo, not some fuzzy lower-resolution version of it.

If the originals are not download on the Mac, this process takes ages: I have to go from photo to photo, and wait several seconds (sometimes 10 seconds or more, my Internet is often not fast) for each individual photo to be downloaded from iCloud before I can make a decision. With videos the process is unbearable.

With the per-album "download originals to this mac" I can do the downloading of the album overnight. By the morning, all photos will be downloaded and I can step through the photos quickly.

Note 1: I know there is a global "download originals to this mac" setting in the preferences. But that setting applies to the entire library. This does not work for me: I literally have more than 100,000 photos in my library and they do not fit on my disk.

Note 2: Before the per-album "Download Originals to this Mac" appeared in Mojave, there was a trick that worked. I would export all photos in an album. This would have the side-effect of also downloading all the originals for that album to the Mac. This trick does not appear to work anymore on Catalina.

Note 3: I am not the first to complain about this. See https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/dkgzqe/photos_on_catalina_how_to_download_originals_to/

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jul 7, 2020 10:08 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

threeleggeddog Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 9, 2020 12:07 AM in response to threeleggeddog

It is even worse than I originally thought.

Normally, I can rely on the "progress circle" to appear in the bottom right of the photo to indicate that the photo is being downloaded from iCloud. Once the circle fills up, I know that the download is complete, and indeed the photo "snaps" from a fuzzy image to a sharp full resolution image.

Quite often, as I am going from photo to photo in an album, the "progress circle" in the bottom right corner that indicates that a photo is being downloaded from iCloud does NOT appear.

This leads me to think that the photo has already been downloaded and that I am looking at the full resolution photo.

If the photo is fuzzy, I conclude I must have taken an out-of-focus photo, and I want to delete it.

But then, a few seconds later, the photo suddenly "snaps" into focus. Evidently, the full resolution version was actually still being downloaded from iCloud even though the "progress circle" was not being displayed.

So, even if photos are apparently already downloaded from iCloud, I must still wait 10 seconds or so on each photo just to make sure that I am actually looking at the full resolution photo and not at a cached lower resolution version. Thus, flipping through an album to make a selection of photos to keep takes *at least* 15 minutes per 100 photos.

Photos in Catalina has become completely unusable for managing large photo libraries.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

197,309 points

Jul 8, 2020 2:55 AM in response to threeleggeddog

The option has vanished from Photos 5 in Catalina, All we can do is sending feature requests to Apple.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

I second your request, for the same reasons you mentioned. My current solution is to keep the iCloud Photos Library small enough to avoid the "Optimise Mac Storage" option. I am only keeping the favourites in iCloud, plus the photos I am currently working with.

there was a trick that worked. I would export all photos in an album. This would have the side-effect of also downloading all the originals for that album to the Mac. This trick does not appear to work anymore on Catalina.

It should still work. The downloaded photos should stay put, until "Optimise Storage" kicks in and purges them again. Do you perhaps have less than 20GB of really free storage on your Mac, not just "Available Storage" that needs purging to use it? if you are low on unused storage the downloads will be removed immediately. A MacBook Air does typically not have much storage.

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Answer 3

Aug 5, 2020 1:07 AM in response to threeleggeddog

Update: I spent thousands of dollars to buy a new MacBook 2020 with 2TB of storage to get around this issue (by allowing me to store all photos locally).

I used the migration assistant to migrate everything (including the Photos library) from my old MacBook 2016 (running Mojave) to my new MacBook 2020 (running Catalina).

The experience has been a complete disaster.

On my new MacBook, Photos constantly hangs and I can only fix it by restarting the laptop (see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251652645)

And, it even seems that Photos on my new MacBook randomly "loses" photos (see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251602029)

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Answer 4

Jul 8, 2020 2:58 AM in response to léonie

Yes, I also though that "it should still work" but it doesn't. I have plenty of disk free (more than 1 TB free). I expert all photos in the album. And then *immediately* after the export is finished, I start going through the photos quickly. Some of them are local, about about 1/3rd of them have to be downloaded again (the circle being filled appears in the bottom right again).

I will file an enhancement request. If enough of us do, maybe it will be put back.

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Answer 5

Jul 27, 2020 6:37 AM in response to threeleggeddog

For some reason, the previous additional note caused this issue to be marked as "solved", but it is most definitely not solved.

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Catalina Photos: how to "Download Originals to this Mac" for a single album

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