This morning Apple Sr Advisor told me I cannot sync iCloud Photos to an external hard drive that is always connected via USB to my Mac Mini.
Has anyone successfully synced a system Photo’s Library on an external hard drive to iCloud? Seems like a huge gap if this is not possible…
I have ~330GB of photos in iCloud and a 250GB Mac Mini running macOS 15 Sequoia.
Thanks
Devil in the details. Correct, you cannot in general sync to an external drive. However, you can keep your photo library on an external drive and sync that using iCloud Photos.
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Devil in the details. Correct, you cannot in general sync to an external drive. However, you can keep your photo library on an external drive and sync that using iCloud Photos.
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Your system library is the only one that actively syncs with iCloud. You should enable system library and then iCloud Photos. Then, your photos will sync to the library on your external drive.
Open photos.
Select library
Scroll to the bottom. You'll find the item count and cloud status listed.
With the approx. 90 percent reduction in size you may wish to ensure that optimize photos is not selected.
Yennif81 wrote:
Photos still says "Restoring from iCloud..." but my system library size has not changed (26.49GB, to be exact).
What else is causing the pictures to not download? I have 1 GIG Fiber service from AT&T. I should be able to fully download my pictures overnight..
The initial sync can take quite some time, especially for a large library. You could always create a new library on your Mac and make it the system library, then sync with iCloud. Your current library may have become corrupt. Or, if you've turned it off/on it will start the process over. Be sure that your external drive is formatted properly too.
I did the first set of steps in the link you provided.
What is the benefit of step 5 if the library on the external drive won’t sync to iCloud?
”If you use iCloud Photos, or to access the library via the Photo Picker in other apps, designate this library as the System Photo Library.”
Exactly!
That is how it’s been set up for over 30 days. iCloud Photos storage is ~330GB and system Photo library on external drive is ~26GB. I have 2TB of free space on the external drive.
The lack of iCloud/Photos errors/warnings or debugging feedback is disappointing.
Photos still says "Restoring from iCloud..." but my system library size has not changed (26.49GB, to be exact).
What else is causing the pictures to not download? I have 1 GIG Fiber service from AT&T. I should be able to fully download my pictures overnight..
Sync iCloud Photos to external hard drive
