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Russ New Boy Author

Level 4

1,150 points

Photos Creating Empty Albums

Following on from a sync issue that I had with iCloud Photos I have decided to try and completely reset my iCloud library. I recovered a Time Machine backup of my Photos library on my Mac and switched off iCloud Photos and that is fine.

On my phone , I also switched off iCloud Photos and asked for all photos to be removed, which it did and the library is empty. I checked iCloud.com and the photos are in the deleted bin.

However, the following day I looked on my phone and it now shows all of the albums (about 100) I had previously created, but which are now empty. Yet the iPad library is still empty.

My question, and the reason for the post, is that the whole mess arose in the first place is because I deleted a couple of empty albums on my phone but this caused the same album on my Mac (which did contain a a few thousand photos) to also be deleted. How do I make sure the iCloud library is completely rest so that when I re-sync the recovered library on the Mac everything starts working as it should?

iPhone XS

Posted on Oct 22, 2020 6:18 AM

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,273 points

Posted on Oct 22, 2020 6:45 AM

Turning off iCloud Photos on your devices does not empty your iCloud Photos library. Make sure you have a working backup copy of your Photos Library with all photos and albums,

then create a new , empty library and sync it with iCloud Photos. Delete all albums and folders, that Download from iCloud Photos, and when you are seeing an empty library on all your devices, restore your backed up Photos Library on your Mac and let it sync with iCloud.

I am always turning on iCloud on my Mac as the last device. I had it occasionally happening that turning on iCloud Photos on my iPad after the Mac already has been syncing with iCloud caused the albums to vanish from my Mac.

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Photos Creating Empty Albums

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