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Restoring all photos in iCloud Photo Library into a Photos library on Mac

About a year ago I introduced my wife to the benefits of iCloud photo library. Fantastic but...she thought that meant she no longer needed a photos library on her mac and disconnected the external drive that contained the photos library. The photos library contained a lot of pre iOS content dating back twenty years or so. When I realised what she had done I decided to reconnect the external drive but it had become corrupted. She had also changed computer (M1 MacBook Air) with a fresh install so NO time machine back up of the photos library.

At the moment all the photos are safe in iCloud but I'd prefer to have a fallback.

So here's my question...is it possible to restore all the photos from iCloud Photo Library into a Mac photos library without downloading each individual image - I seem to remember downloading them from iCloud doesn't retain their metadata (date, location etc) but I maybe wrong.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading my essay!!

Posted on Feb 23, 2021 11:15 PM

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,723 points

Posted on Feb 24, 2021 12:06 AM

I would connect another external volume, correctly formatted for using it with Photos for Mac, as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Then create a new empty Photos Library on this external volume and make this library the system photos library and enable iCloud Photos for it, without enabling "Optimise Mac Storage".
- To create the new library launch Photos while holding down the options key ⌥ and select "New Library" from the dialog.
- To make it the System Photos Library open "Photos > Preferences > General": Click "Use as System Photos Library"
- To make it the iCloud Photos Library, open "Photos > Preferences > iCloud" and enable "iCloud Photo" and "Download Originals".
Wait for the photos to download back from iCloud to the new Photos Library. This should save all metadata. (it will depend on the System version, if the faces will be included).

See how to update this backup regularly: How to back up an optimized iCloud Photos Library - Apple Community

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Restoring all photos in iCloud Photo Library into a Photos library on Mac

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