iCloud and Photos creating duplicates when I connect my phone to my computer

I have my Photos stored in iCloud. When I connect my iPhone to my MacBook Pro, Photos identifies photos that are already on my computer as new ones to be imported. It seems that these are old photos that weren't even taken on this iPhone but that appear in my iPhone because they're synced from iCloud. Is my MacBook Pro seeing the low-res (optimised) versions of these photos and thinking that they're different to the original file already on my MacBook Pro and in iCloud?

That is, photos I took years ago, imported to Photos and uploaded to iCloud, are now synced to my iPhone as lower-res versions and then potentially being downloaded to my MacBook Pro as inferior duplicates?

This confusion is potentially disastrous for my library, loosing track of original high-res pics and optimised versions.

And while I anticipate someone might suggest I just say no to importing them, it means I have to go through and identify the recent images that I DO want to import!

Posted on Oct 4, 2023 12:49 AM

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

200,753 points

Posted on Oct 4, 2023 8:34 AM

Is your iPhone using "Optimize iPhone Storage"? Then it will occasionally download high resolution originals from iCloud. And the download from iCloud will change the creation date of the downloaded file. So the newly downloaded high resolution originals will appear as new files on your Mac, because they are having a different file creation date from the files already on your Mac. Just do not import any images from your iPhone to your Mac, but let iCloud Photos sync the photos to your Mac, when you are using iCloud Photos on your iPhone. Do not mix two methods of syncing, as this will disable the duplicate detection.

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iCloud and Photos creating duplicates when I connect my phone to my computer

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