You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

User profile for user: marthamlm
marthamlm Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Photos migrating to MacBook

My new MacBook is taking a VERY long time to download the photos migrated from my IMac. Not sure it is even working. Any thoughts?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.0

Posted on Jan 5, 2022 12:34 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: TonyCollinet
TonyCollinet
User level: Level 7
23,954 points

Posted on Jan 5, 2022 11:07 PM

What I am not understanding is you say you transferred 19000 photos - were these in the photos library? Viewable when you open the photos app?


Or were they individual image files in a folder?


Then after you transferred the library it synced again with iCloud - and that took a long time - Correct?


If that is now complete then there is nothing else to do. However if the sync has only just started and is taking a long time, you could choose just to create a new empty library, and sync that with iCloud. This is quicker than a sync of a full library, but still quite slow. So if the full sync is more than half way though, probably not worth starting it again.

View in context

Similar questions

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: TonyCollinet
TonyCollinet
User level: Level 7
23,954 points

Jan 5, 2022 11:07 PM in response to marthamlm

What I am not understanding is you say you transferred 19000 photos - were these in the photos library? Viewable when you open the photos app?


Or were they individual image files in a folder?


Then after you transferred the library it synced again with iCloud - and that took a long time - Correct?


If that is now complete then there is nothing else to do. However if the sync has only just started and is taking a long time, you could choose just to create a new empty library, and sync that with iCloud. This is quicker than a sync of a full library, but still quite slow. So if the full sync is more than half way though, probably not worth starting it again.

Reply
User profile for user: marthamlm
marthamlm Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Jan 5, 2022 5:11 PM in response to TonyCollinet

Thank you Tony. I was migrating everything from my iMac to my new MacBook Air. It kept telling me there was not enough storage, so I kept eliminating what to transfer. So I finally left off enough that a transfer took place. Including the 19,000 photos I have. So when the transfer was finished, the photos took a long time to download. In a perfect world I would have been able to skip transferring the photos. I have them all in the Cloud. I would love to know if I could do that. Clearly I am not tech-savvy. Thanks.

Reply

Photos migrating to MacBook

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.
Learn more Sign up