Merge deceased Mom’s iPhone Photos into my iPhone Photos

mabacapa wrote:

Thanks for responding.

I've followed your steps and this is currently 'merging:'

Enable iCloud Photos on her phone and give it time to merge her Photo Library with your iCloud Photos library.

Her iPhone Photos says, "Syncing 11,160 Items from iCloud," which sounds like her 64GB iPhone, that I've now logged into with MY Apple ID, is trying to grab MY 500GB of photos to add to MY 64GB iPhone.

Yes. Synchronization works both ways. When you have iCloud Photos enabled, it will always try to keep copies of all photos in iCloud, and on all synchronized devices.

My MacBook Photos count is increasing (slowly), so it might be working on the 'merge,' but if the 64GB iPhone is also trying to download all my Photos, it's not going finish.

Go into Settings on her iPhone and turn on "Optimize iPhone Storage". The reason to select "Download and Keep Originals" earlier was so that her phone would get full-size copies of all of HER photos before you started a merge.

If you turn on "Optimize iPhone Storage" on her phone, you will be giving it permission to

• Store reduced-quality, space-saving versions of her photos on her phone – once it has finished uploading full-size originals to iCloud.
• Store reduced-quality, space-saving versions of your photos on her phone – instead of having to download the entire 500 GB worth of photos.

When "Optimize iPhone Storage" is turned on, the process of substituting space-saving local versions for full-size local versions (or vice versa) is completely automatic - you have no control over it. But, hopefully, the system will be able to save enough device storage in this fashion to let it complete the synchronization.

If it does, the end result will be that iCloud Photos contains full-size copies of all of the photos and videos from her phone and from your phone. Her phone will have space-saving copies of the photos and videos. As for your phone, that would depend on its capacity and whether you have "Optimize iPhone Storage" enabled on it (or not).

I'm going to assume that you are using iCloud Photos, and have enough storage space for all of your data.

If your Mom's phone has enough local device storage to store full-size copies of all of her photos and videos, here is one possible approach.

This is an educated guess, so I would strongly suggest reading through it to see if it makes sense … and/or asking others here for their opinion.

Keep backups

• If you have a Mac that is synchronized with your iCloud Photos library, make a local backup of that Mac and of its Photos Library. (Hopefully you have told the Mac to keep full-size copies of all photos and videos … so that when you make such local backups, the backups will get full-size copies, too.)
• If your mother was using iCloud Photos, do not disable iCloud Photos under her Apple ID completely until you are satisfied that all photos are copied (merged) and safe.

Get her full-size photos and videos into a local (non-synchronized) library on her iPhone

• Get full-size copies of all of your Mom's photos and videos onto her iPhone. If she was using iCloud Photos, and had "Optimize iPhone Storage" turned on, change the setting to "Download and Keep Originals". Give her phone enough time (connected to Wi-Fi Internet service and power) to implement the change.
• If applicable, turn off iCloud Photos on her phone (only).

How to turn off iCloud Photos - Apple Support

Associate her phone with your Apple ID, and use iCloud Photos synchronization to merge "your" photos (from her phone) with your existing photos (in iCloud)

• Turn off all other iCloud synchronization options on her phone, log it out of her Apple ID, and then log it into your Apple ID.
• Enable iCloud Photos on her phone and give it time to merge her Photo Library with your iCloud Photos library. If you scroll to the very bottom of the Photos view on her iPhone, you may find small text telling you either that (a) there are items remaining to be synchronized, or that (b) synchronization is complete. For this step, it will likely help to leave her phone connected to Wi-Fi Internet service and to power.

Cleanup

• Once her phone reports that synchronization is complete (not merely paused), with all of the items synchronized to iCloud, you can turn off iCloud Photos (on her phone only), log her phone out of your Apple ID, and then log it back into hers.

When you are completely finished with her phone, you can reset/wipe it as outlined in

What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

For what it's worth. If you have a Mac I would just create a shared album with all of the photos on her phone. Share it with you. Then, in photos on the Mac, wait for the sync. Select all of the items in the folder, two-finger click on one and select import.

Richard.Taylor wrote:

muguy wrote: …create a shared album with all of the photos on her phone.

I haven't used shared albums very much-- isn't it true that shared albums have lower resolution images without all the original metadata? I'mm not sure, but I'd be cautious.

I actually just tried it on my Mac. All the metadata is there, the dates are correct, and the resolution/size seems to be the same. It's still a good idea to double check regardless.

Looks like there may be some size reduction. Whether it is meaningful or not is the question. How to use Shared Albums in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac - Apple Support

I just imported some in a shared album from 2017 and the dates were correct in the library. The pictures will display in imported view by the import date (eg. today). You can always try 1-2 and see what happens.

When a device's Photos Library is connected to iCloud, Photos does whatever is necessary to make the Photos Library on the device exactly the same as the Photos Library at iCloud.com. So it will copy all of your mom's pictures to iCloud, and it will copy all the pictures at iCloud to your mom's phone. If you have "Optimize" set, then it will copy only smaller versions to the phone, so it may not take as long as it seems. It will copy her full sized original pictures to iCloud.

I think it copies from the phone first, so if you look at iCloud.com, you may see that all her pictures are there. When you are sure that all her pictures have been copied, you can stop the download from iCloud to the phone, if you want.

muguy wrote: …create a shared album with all of the photos on her phone.

I haven't used shared albums very much-- isn't it true that shared albums have lower resolution images without all the original metadata? I'mm not sure, but I'd be cautious.