Apple rep said if I delete photos off my Mac to make space on my mac, that this simultaneously deletes the pics from iCloud. So I HAVE to move my 10,500 plus photos and videos to a hard drive??? and I cannot simply delete them off my Mac and still have them in the cloud?? This is crazy to me that this is the only option….
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15
Did the Apple rep mention the Optimize Mac Storage option in Photos Preferences?
iCloud Photos is a syncing service. Any photo you delete from a device where iCloud Photos is turned on will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to iCloud Photos. You can potentially reduce the storage space required on a device by turning on Optimize Storage. See: Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support
Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.
Or you can do what I've done:
I run two libraries. I pay for 200GB of iCloud, and have a "main" library holding all my recent photos, that is synced with iCloud and resides on my system drive. All these photos are available on all my devices. Currently I have 1 1/2 years of photographs there, taking up less than half of my iCloud space. (This dual library strategy is equally valid if you don't use iCloud but just want a smaller local library stored on your mac)
I also have an archive library which holds everything older. It is on a separate drive (correctly formatted and prepared - see link below). I use powerphotos to periodically copy photos from my main library to my archive library.
I am very very rigorous about backups. Both libraries are backed up to time machine. In addition both libraries are regularly copied to a second external drive. Finally I periodically export all original images (so that I have the actual image files separately from the photos library) and copy those to a network drive backup. I have a copy of these stored away from home also (mitigate risk of fire/theft).
My Mac has iPhoto folder and photos not sure how I ended up with both and one he more than another is there a way to condense them into one or do I literally have to go through all 10,000+ to see if one has the same as the other (if any photo that’s under iPhoto is also already under photos)?
No mention at all about any way to make space in my Mac only that it will permanently delete my photos f I start deleting them…
my biggest issues are space on my Mac I have gone through and got rid of tons of things I feel like at this point it’s a giant paperweight and now I have the annoying yahoo virus where every time I use safari it forces yahoo and I read that means I have a malware virus
iCloud Photo Library is a sharing service, not a storage one.
Makes sense do you suggest google cloud?
Delete photos to make room also deletes from cloud???
