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BRuke1 Author

Level 1

4 points

Photos albums

Problems transferring "My Albums" and "My Projects" to new MacBook.

One of the reasons I got my new MacBook is that its bigger memory allows me to keep my Photos Library on board. Previously it was on an external drive.

When I tried to transfer the Photos Library to my new MacBook, the process stalled twice at about 2/3 of the more than 300 gigs of photos. I finally, successfully, installed all the photos from iCloud.

BUT: The "My Albums" and "My Projects" did not get transferred. I still have them on the external (which is almost up-to-date (as I've shot a few pictures since it was last used) also (I'm confident) in Time Machine.

Question: How do I now get "My Albums" and "My Projects" into Photos on my new MacBook?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.13

Posted on May 2, 2022 8:02 AM

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,729 points

Posted on May 2, 2022 9:20 AM

The albums should appear once the syncing with iCloud Photos is complete. It may take more than a week for such a large library.

But the projects cannot be restored from iCloud, because iCloud Photos is not syncing projects between devices. If you want to transfer the projects to your new Mac , you have to copy the old Photos Library to your new Mac. But if you transfer the old Photos library to the new Mac and enable iCloud Photos, it will result in a very long upload of the complete library to iCloud and it will take even longer for the albums to sync back from iCloud.

I would keep the old Photos Library on an external drive, so you can work with the old projects, but not bother to transfer them to your main library.

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Photos albums

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