why do photos have to sync every time i turn on and off icloud

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Level 1

8 points

why do photos have to sync every time i turn on and off icloud

I recently bought a Mac book so I decided to turn on my photo sync to iCloud from my phone. I have the largest capacity iPhone X so all my photos have been stored on the phone itself. I wanted to be able to se the photos on my new Mac and then back them up to my personal server. I had 5000 photos that uploaded to iCloud. It took HOURS! But they all finally showed up via iCloud on my Mac. Now I realized that keeping this feature on was draining the crap out of my iPhone battery. So I figured I’d just turn the iPhone iCloud photo backup off and periodically turn it back on to sync the new photos with the iCloud. I went to do that today, sync some 50 photos I had taken since my first sync. My phone is telling me that I have to sync all 5000+ photos and videos again!! Why?? If they are already in the cloud, why isn’t my phone just uploading the new content?

Posted on Mar 11, 2018 7:54 PM

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Answer 1

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gail from maine

Level 9

52,575 points

Mar 12, 2018 8:09 AM in response to Mkhufton

I think that you may be a bit confused about the purpose of the iCloud Photo Library.

iCloud Photo Library is designed to keep all iOS devices and Macs that are signed into the same iCloud account, and which have iCloud Photo Library turned on, continuously sync'd. So, that any change made at any time would be automatically sync'd across all devices immediately.

So, iCloud Photo Library is a syncing service, not an archival one.

In order to accomplish what you have described, it would be far easier to import your photos from your iPhone to your Mac. You can do this in a number of ways, but the easiest way is to physically hook up the device to the Mac, and import them photos to the Photos app:

PHOTO IMPORT IOS TO MAC/PC

You can also set up Photo Stream on both the iPhone and the Mac, and all new photos will automatically upload and import into your Photos Library on the Mac. Videos still have to be imported manually, but photos automatically import when you have a Wifi connection on the Mac and the iPhone.

You can then back up your Photos Library on your Mac using Time Machine, or by copying it to an external drive manually.

Here are some links to articles about iCloud Photo Library that also may help you get a better idea of how it works:

iCloud Photo Library Help - Apple Support

iCloud Photo Library - Photos Help

I, personally, do not use iCloud Photo Library. I let my photos automatically import via Photo Stream to my Photos Library on my Mac, I sometimes create shared albums to send to my Mac via iCloud Photo Sharing: iCloud Photo Sharing - Apple Support, and then I import my videos on a regular basis.

I also back up my Mac Photos Library using Time Machine.

Cheers,

GB

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Answer 2

Mkhufton Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 11, 2018 8:15 PM in response to Allan Eckert

Also, I had “push” turned on for the iCloud. Could that have been causing some of the battery drain? I’ve changed it to fetch hourly, will that help? That means then it will only sync any new photo or video hourly, not the moment it happens ?

Does that sound right or am I way off ?

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Answer 3

Mar 12, 2018 8:09 AM in response to Mkhufton

The devices being synced are not aware if anything has been changed during the time that iCloud was disconnected. So they sync to make sure nothing is lost.

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Answer 4

Mkhufton Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 11, 2018 8:04 PM in response to Allan Eckert

So I basically should have never turned off the iCloud photo sync at all because every time I want to sync photos it’s going to have to go back through the 8 hour long process of syncing?

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Answer 5

LACAllen

Level 8

43,416 points

Mar 11, 2018 10:20 PM in response to Mkhufton

iCloud Photo Library wants to sync in real time all the time.

There is no programmable delay or setting.

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why do photos have to sync every time i turn on and off icloud

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