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Unable to enable iCloud for Photos

I was pruning my hard drive on my mac and found a local file in my Home/Pictures directory with a .photoslibrary extension that contained what seemed like an exact duplicate of the photos I stored in iCloud, but in my local disk. I proceeded to manually delete that 15gb file => move to trash => empty trash, which cleared the space, but also corrupted my Photos app. At first, before deleting the .photoslibrary file, I tried to disable iCloud for Photos, which prompts you to delete local photos, which will remain in the cloud in full, but it only managed to delete an insignificant amount of low resolution backups. Now, after removing the .photoslibrary file, which seemed to be the core system file created by the OS, I'm unable to re-enable iCloud for Photos, which I thought I could do to then access the photos I can verify still exist on the cloud, on my mac. To note, the Photos app still works, but it opens blank, and I had to create a new photo library to get it to open properly, since I mentioned the previous .photoslibrary file I deleted was the default/core file the system was using. Is there any way to solve this problem? Just want to be able to access photos stored on iCloud on my mac again with the Photos app. Thanks!!

MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 21, 2020 10:26 PM

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Posted on Oct 21, 2020 10:36 PM

Hi


Fortunately this is an easy one to solve. Icloud can only work with your system library which you have deleted. However, it is easy to change the new library you have created to the system library.


In photos, make sure your new library is the one that is open - then go to preferences - in the general tab, and click "use as photos system library.


It should be possible then to re-enable Icloud. When you do, select optimise storage if you don't want the full resolution images downloaded from Icloud (if you want to see the icloud images on your mac it must download at least low res smaller versions of the files to photos).


BUT:

Be aware - Icloud is not a backup. We get people here every few days who have deleted much wanted photos on one of their devices, and discovered that Icloud has deleted them from all devices. That is because I cloud is a sync service and keeps all devices libraries the same. It is also always possible for some system failure to cause your Icloud photos to be deleted. If you value your photographs please make sure you have a backup of them safely stored somewhere. Also bear in mind that if you use optimised storage to reduce the space on your mac, then time machine cannot back them up from your mac.

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Question marked as Best reply

Oct 21, 2020 10:36 PM in response to alexkyen

Hi


Fortunately this is an easy one to solve. Icloud can only work with your system library which you have deleted. However, it is easy to change the new library you have created to the system library.


In photos, make sure your new library is the one that is open - then go to preferences - in the general tab, and click "use as photos system library.


It should be possible then to re-enable Icloud. When you do, select optimise storage if you don't want the full resolution images downloaded from Icloud (if you want to see the icloud images on your mac it must download at least low res smaller versions of the files to photos).


BUT:

Be aware - Icloud is not a backup. We get people here every few days who have deleted much wanted photos on one of their devices, and discovered that Icloud has deleted them from all devices. That is because I cloud is a sync service and keeps all devices libraries the same. It is also always possible for some system failure to cause your Icloud photos to be deleted. If you value your photographs please make sure you have a backup of them safely stored somewhere. Also bear in mind that if you use optimised storage to reduce the space on your mac, then time machine cannot back them up from your mac.

Unable to enable iCloud for Photos

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