Hiding Photo Albums

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Level 1

6 points

Hiding Photo Albums

Hi,

Apologies if the has been asked many time before. I'm learning to navigate.

I like keeping all of my photos in one place from years gone by and managed through the Photos app. What I don't like is these photos shared across all of my devices. Memories are memories and sometimes we want to recall them and sometimes we don't. So that holiday that I had 10 years ago with an ex, is not something I would necessarily want on my phone but I like to know the memories are still there should I want to look at them at some point and ridicule that old hairstyle or outfit.

Is there a way to hide entire albums from devices from the Photos app on the Mac without using the laborious hide photos method on the iPhone? It would be good if you could select which albums are visible on which devices so that certain albums appear on the iPhone and Apple TV for example but managed by the Mac and still saved in the cloud to ensure photos are never lost.

Mac mini, macOS 11.3

Posted on May 6, 2021 5:26 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

200,753 points

May 6, 2021 6:09 AM in response to Extermi-Nate

You can have several Photos Libraries on your Mac and only one of them can sync with iCloud Photos.

So you can have one library in iCloud Photos and on all devices, and several libraries on your Mac. But you cannot exclude complete albums within your iCloud Photos Library from syncing.

Put the photos you want to see everywhere on all devices into the iCloud Photos Library, and the photos you want only to see on your Mac in separate libraries, locally on your Mac. Se:

Create additional libraries

If you want to keep your photos safe, you should make regular backups of your Photos Libraries by copying the libraries to an external volume or including them into your regular Time Machine backups. iCloud Photos does not suffice as a backup. iCloud Photos is just giving you the added security of an off-site storage. If your house burns downy can recover the iCloud data from iCloud and start over, but you cannot recover accidentally deleted photos from iCloud. And it is very easy to make mistakes and accidentally delete more photos then you wanted to trash and they will be deleted everywhere. With iCloud Photos we are having essentially only one copy of our photos because of the syncing, even if we are seeing them on several devices. A backup should be a separate safety copy, that we never touch, not the collection of photos we are continually working with.

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Answer 2

Extermi-Nate Author

Level 1

6 points

May 6, 2021 8:47 AM in response to léonie

Thank you for your response. The information regarding creating additional libraries is somewhat useful but it's more of a workaround than a solution. I still can't see all of the photos in one place.

I think most people these days utilise their iPhones to take pictures so what I would have to do is create the album, then go into the Photos app on the Mac and move the Album folder to the hard drive, switch libraries, move the Album to the new library folder, switch libraries and delete the original album. Super long winded.

As for Time Machine... does anyone still use that antique?! Seriously, though I'm not precious enough about my system folders to require it to be backed up and all my media files and creative workings are stored in iCloud, accessible through the Files app or through Finder. If you can't trust Apple to look after your data and files who can you trust right? As a precaution, some media files are backed up to Dropbox like duplicates of photos and movies I own for added security but more so for greater accessibility. Accidentally deleting a photo can happen whether that's in the cloud, on an external drive or in a wallet in your pocket. It happens but I believe I have sufficient copies around.

In my personal view, the Photos app needs a a bit of a revisit. It's been too long! Its frustratingly busy and not particularly flexible. Surely it would be quite easy to toggle an albums visibility from on to off without mashing them all together in one 'Hidden' folder, which you then have to trawl through if you later decide you want to unhide the odd photo or two.

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Hiding Photo Albums

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