Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
My wife and I just bought a new iMac and want to transfer all our photos to an external hard drive. What is the best way to do this? There are thousands of pictures and the shared albums aren't working well. The computer is using my Apple ID so I was able to get all of mine but we can't figure out how to get hers.
iMac 24″, macOS 11.6
Hi - Since you mentioned your apple ID, I'm assuming you want to use iCloud.
The best (in fact pretty much the only) way to do this is to set up a photos library on the external drive that you both use as your system library.
First you need to move the library to the external drive. Make sure FIRST that it is formatted correctly (APFS or MacOS extended)
For details see:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517
Then you are each going to need a user account on the mac (You already have one, you'll need to set up one for your wife, and set up her apple ID with that account.
Then on each account, open the external library and set it to be the system library (in photos preferences), then enable iCloud photos - if not already.
Then when photos is open in your account, it will sync your phone photos to the library. Similarly when photos is open in your wife's account it will sync her photos to the library. You will both have the others photos on your phones (everything will be synced)
Hi - Since you mentioned your apple ID, I'm assuming you want to use iCloud.
The best (in fact pretty much the only) way to do this is to set up a photos library on the external drive that you both use as your system library.
First you need to move the library to the external drive. Make sure FIRST that it is formatted correctly (APFS or MacOS extended)
For details see:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517
Then you are each going to need a user account on the mac (You already have one, you'll need to set up one for your wife, and set up her apple ID with that account.
Then on each account, open the external library and set it to be the system library (in photos preferences), then enable iCloud photos - if not already.
Then when photos is open in your account, it will sync your phone photos to the library. Similarly when photos is open in your wife's account it will sync her photos to the library. You will both have the others photos on your phones (everything will be synced)
Importing photos from two iPhones
