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.
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