Migrate and Merge Existing Photo Library to iCloud Photos

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Migrate and Merge Existing Photo Library to iCloud Photos

I have a photo library on an external drive that has thousands of photos and is about 1TB in size.

I recently turned on iCloud Photos for my iPhone and my iPhone is now synced.

When I open my existing photo library on my Mac, all the photos appear. Great. But it will not give me any options for iCloud without making it my system library.

How can I keep my existing library and access iCloud in my mac?

I was hoping I could start to download and import the iCloud photos to add them to my existing library. Is this possible?

I am running Ventura.

iMac 27″, macOS 13.2

Posted on Jun 17, 2023 3:37 AM

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Answer 1

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Mrcturner Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 17, 2023 2:30 PM in response to muguy

I thought as much.

But I get the below warning:

Switching the System Photo Library will turn off iCloud Photos.

Any photos and videos that have not been fully downloaded will be removed from this Mac and Shared Albums will be disabled. Turn on iCloud Photos for this new System Photo Library in Settings.

Am I going to lose any of my library? It is all saved locally to the external drive.

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Answer 2

Jul 1, 2023 12:14 PM in response to Mrcturner

I get the same, somewhat cryptic dialogue. "Switching the System Photo Library will turn off iCloud Photos.

Any photos and videos that have not been fully downloaded will be removed from this Mac and Shared Albums will be disabled. Turn on iCloud Photos for this new System Photo Library in Settings."

Clicked OK and got a spinning beach ball for a few minutes. Then, turned on iCloud Photos in the preferences for the new library.

I have 70K photos in the library. 20K in iCloud. I'm hoping that it is smart enough to combine them....

All it says right now is "Updating..." Somehow I hoped that a 3 Trillion dollar company would be a little more clear about this pretty basic operation.

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