Is there a way to move my Live Photos from my iPhone to my MacBook without using iCloud?

That is a dangerous combination - using iCloud Photos only on the iPhone and not on your Mac as well.

The problem is, that you can no longer download the photos easily from your iPhone, when the primary storage of your photos is iCloud and the iPhone is only mirroring them.

When you connect your iPhone to the Mac you will only be seeing a random selection of the photos currently downloaded from iCloud. You can never be sure, if you have downloaded all new photos. And the duplicate detection on import may be seeing already imported photos as new photos and may import duplicates.

You will definitely have to enable "Download and Keep Originals" on your iPhone, so all photos will be downloaded to the iPhone and stay downloaded.

As to your Live Photos. If "Optimize iPhone Storage" is used, Photos may have removed the video component of the Live Photos to save storage on the iPhone.

To be able to download them as Live Photos:

• View the Live Photos animated on your iPhone to force the download of the video component. Then try to import them again to your Mac.
• But you have first to ensure, that you remove any partial downloads of the Live Photos from your Mac. Delete the still frame versions completely from your Mac, even from Recently Deleted", before you try to download the Live Photos again. If there is already the still from on your Mac, Photos may not be able to download the video combined with the still frame as a Live Photo because of the duplicate detection.

ChowSaiHou wrote: ... For reference, I use iCloud only for my iPhone and NOT for my MacBook. (it's another issue, but for some reason since joining iCloud my photos were moved around and are now not in chronological order on my iPhone, so I want to avoid that on my MacBook by not turning iCloud on for my MacBook) Thanks.

First-- pay attention to what léonie said!

The Mac is way more versatile than an iPhone in organizing your pictures, so there's a big advantage to using iCloud on both the Mac and the iPhone. If your pictures again get disordered somehow, it's way easier to put them back on the Mac and let the phone follow. Also, you can use keywords and Smart Albums on the Mac to help organize the pictures for the iPhone.

When you use iCloud Photos, the full sized images are kept there. An advantage is that you can choose to save storage space on your Mac or iPhone with "Optimize Storage." This allows the device to keep smaller versions, but to grab the full size off iCloud when you want to zoom in or edit or print, etc. So, for instance, Live Photos may keep only the static image until you actually play it. And, as léonie said, when you try to transfer it, a smaller, static image may be all that's on the phone.

You're concerned about what will happen to your Mac Library if you connect it to iCloud. I would suggest that you make a new Library on your Mac and connect it to iCloud, and keep your original Library separate and unaffected. Many of us keep multiple Libraries.

I was trying to decide if I should go ahead and include instructions--but it's easy for me to copy and paste, and you can ignore them if you wish so, here goes:

To make a new Library for the Mac, close Photos, option click the Photos icon, and choose Create New from the Library dialog. You can name it anything you like, maybe "iPhone Library," or something.

I have a bunch of Libraries....

A new, empty Library will open. Then, on the Mac in Photos>Settings>General, you must make this new, empty Library your System Library. You can have only one Library that's called the System Library, and the System Library is the only one that can talk to iCloud. So other Libraries, like the one you have now, will be insulated from iCloud.

In this picture "Use as your System Library" is grayed out, because it already is my system library.

Then go to Settings>iCloud and connect this new Library to iCloud.

Set "Download Originals," if you have the storage space available on your Mac. If not, you can check "Optimize."

Then wait. Wait some more, and eventually this new Library will fill with images from iCloud that are from your iPhone. You can switch to your other Library by just double clicking on the other Library in the Pictures folder. Or, you can use the "Choose Library" dialog from option-clicking the Photos icon, as before. The original Library will just continue with it's original content.

Let us know how it goes...

ChowSaiHou wrote: The 'Recents' folder is still out of order, but I guess that is something I'll have to live with.

The "Recents" view always shows all of your pictures in the order they were added. The "Library" view always shows all of your pictures in the order they were a taken (according to the pictures' metadata.) These albums always provide the same view so that, when something goes wrong or seems off, you (and we) can depend on it showing the same thing, and there's no chance that someone changed the order or removed pictures.

If you want an album that provides some other view, then on the Mac you can create an album and sort the pictures in it by date or by title. This album will appear with the same sort on your iCloud linked iPhone or iPad.

On your Mac you can use a Smart Album to select the picture you want. Unfortunately, iOS doesn't show Smart Albums so, once the Mac's Smart Album chooses the pictures you want, you can copy them into a regular created album that will copy to the phone. Pictures that can be seen in multiple albums take up no extra storage.

It sounds like things are going right--let us know if you have more questions...