I rebuilt my computer and now I had to force Photos to pick up the photos from my iPhone. When I physically connect my MBP and iPhone and look at "Photos" it says "To sync photos from this Mac, turn off iCloud Photos". I don't understand how it would work to turn off iCloud Photos. Can someone explain this?
MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 14.2
You can sync your pictures by either using iCloud Photos or by connecting with a cable-- doing both would be very confusing!
So, if your Photos Library is connected to iCloud, then the pictures on your phone go to iCloud and then are synced with the Mac, all without you doing anything. That's what most of us do. But if you want to instead transfer pictures with a cable, you must turn off iCloud syncing.
iCloud Photos is not a backup or an additional storage-- its purpose is to synchronize your Mac, iPad, and iPhone so all have the same pictures in their Photos Libraries. You also have the choice of keeping smaller pictures on the (smaller) phone so they don't take up so much storage, but you can choose to keep full images on the phone if you like.
Above reply is correct.
See if the restored Mac needs to have iCloud Photos re-enabled after the rebuild.
Set up iCloud Photos on all your devices - Apple Support
To sync photos from this Mac, turn off iCloud Photos? What does this mean?
