Hello! I copied my photo library to my external hard drive and set it as my new library location, but when I try to designate my external hard drive as my system photo library, this pops up:
How do I tell if my photos have been fully downloaded? I'm terrified of deleting my precious photos so I'm second-guessing everything I'm doing. Thanks in advance!
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch,Early 2015), iOS 9.3.3
How do I tell if my photos have been fully downloaded? I'm terrified of deleting my precious photos so I'm second-guessing everything I'm doing. Thanks in advance!
Switch back to the version of the Photos Library on your internal drive.
Your photos have been fully downloaded, if the "Photos > Preferences > iCloud: Download Originals to this Mac" is enabled, and if there is no progress bar in the panel. The panel should be saying "Updated just now".
Copy the library to your external drive only after you are seeing: "Updated just now".
But are you using the option "Cloud: Download Originals to this Mac" or are you using "Optimize Mac Storage"?
If you are using "Optimize Mac Storage", it may not be possible, to download all photos to your system drive, because the photos may be needing more storage than will fit on your system drive.
In that case ignore the warning, as your photos are in iCloud. Photos will only delete the optimized versions from your Mac and download the photos again from iCloud, once the copy of the library on the external drive has been turned on as the system Photo Library and iCloud Photos Library.
Photos not fully downloaded?
