S-Four
Level 1 (15 points)
Photos for Mac

Q: Restore Photos library on my Mac from iCloud

I kept my Photos library file and all of the photos on an external hard-drive that recently crashed.  Luckily all of the Photos are also stored in iCloud.  How do I restore my Photos library file and download all of the Photos to a new external hard-drive?

Mac mini, macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Oct 11, 2016 11:34 PM

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S-Four

Q: Restore Photos library on my Mac from iCloud

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  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Oct 12, 2016 12:36 AM in response to S-Four
    Level 10 (109,052 points)
    iCloud
    Oct 12, 2016 12:36 AM in response to S-Four

    Create a new, empty Photos Library on your external drive. Just launch Photos while holding down the options key, until you are seeing the library chooser panel. select to create a new library.

     

    then open the Photos Preferences and enable this library as your System Photo Library in the General pane of the Prefeences. switch to the iCloud pane and enable iCloud Photo Library for this library.

     

    Wait for your photos to download back from icloud.

     

    Your external drive needs to be directly connected, not a NAS, and it needs to have the file system MacOS Extended (journaled), or you cannot use it with iCloud.

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Oct 12, 2016 6:27 AM in response to S-Four
    Level 10 (85,697 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 12, 2016 6:27 AM in response to S-Four

    Hold doen the option key while launching Photos and create a new library on a  local drive formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) and connected by a fast wired connection like FireWire, USB or ThunderBolt that is not used as a Time Machine backup - and you really should have a local backup - iCloud is not a backup but a syncing service

     

    LN