I downloaded the macOS Sierra (GM) and installed it on my MacBook. Before I installed it a backed up all my data that isn't stored in the cloud or somewhere else. I'm using iCloud Photos to sync all my photos and videos with iCloud. Every photo and video is already in iCloud so I may don't need to back up my Photos library, but I did - just in case something goes wrong. So I wiped off all the data from my MacBook to do a complete and clean installation of Sierra. Finally everything works fine and I'm going to get all my photos and videos back to the Photos app. My backup of my photos and videos has ~13GB and I really have a slow internet connection, so it would be nice if I could use the backed up library instead of downloading everything from iCloud. As soon as I open my library with Photos it starts importing and optimizing etc. and all photos and videos are there. But it starts uploading every single photo and video to iCloud? How can I tell Photos that my photos and videos are already in iCloud and it should stop uploading?

I'm syncing some local folders so they appear as albums "From my Mac" in my iPhone Photos app. It works, but the ordering is wrong. The files in the local folders are actually symlinks into nested folders on a backup drive (actually a Photos.app library) so the paths are mapped like this example: ~/Pictures/example/A75BB473-E7A7-4B52-A184-6BB6D60AFA41.jpeg -> /Volumes/drive/example.photoslibrary/originals/A/A75BB473-E7A7-4B52-A184-6BB6D60AFA41.jpeg Note that I am syncing **folders** not albums, and this is for good reason. Syncing albums is [broken](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/372176/why-wont-photos-import-from-iphone-after-upgrade) for photo libraries on network drives. The photos import no problem, but the order is weird. I can't align it with any ordering I can replicate in the finder. They are *roughly* time ordered based on the EXIF "Date Time Original" tag, but not quite. On the iPhone clicking a photo shows the correct date from the EXIF data, but this is seemingly not being used for ordering. Neither is the file name. The created, modified and access timestamps on the original photos are all the same, so this doesn't seem the principle ordering value either. How does the iPhone sync process determine the order these appear in the album? What can I do to ensure correct time ordering?

The deal is my Apple MacBook Pro (2020, M1, 13 inch) with 1TB of storage is running low on space. Most of the space used is photos and videos. So I thought the simplest way to free stuff on the local hard drive would be to put it all on an external drive; I have a few 1TBs laying around. I know the first thing to do, BTW, is a good Time Machine backup. :-) But that said, I wanted to check if there is a relatively simple way to move all the photos - basically the whole photo library - onto an external drive, and when I run phtoos it can run it from there. I know I could get a bunch of iCloud storage and use that too, but I want to have a local backup, and also be able to run Photos without worrying too much about whether my connection is working. I don't mind taping it to the lid or something :-) By the way I am not a sophisticated user of Photos, I haven't used as far as I know any of the advanced file features and honestly never really got fluent with it. I'm just saving photos on the app as I download them from my phone. I am sure there is probably something simple. It's just not a feature/capability I have used yet. I thought to just drag the folder from the one with my username. But I am never sure if the file pathways and links will keep working, sometimes these things get messed up if you aren't careful. This question was almost answered here https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/193035/how-to-backup-export-photos-videos-from-the-new-photos-app-to-an-external-hard-d But the person asking wanted to know about making it Windows-readable, and I am not sure a) that the procedure would be the same, if it is, then no worries b) if it is applicable to OS Big Sur - again if it is, I will try it

I have a large iCloud photo library of about 30,000 irreplaceable images and videos. It is entirely hosted on icloud - I am using the 'optimise iphone storage' setting and have no high res images stored locally on my laptop as the library is too large. I'm getting concerned that iCloud is the only place I have the full resolution images stored and I want to download a backup of the entire library to an external HDD (preferred), or a second cloud service (less preferable) to ensure I have a second copy. I am happy keeping my main library on icloud as it works well for me and allows me to sync all my different devices (iphone, macbook, 2x ipads), I'm just looking to make a second **backup** copy in case something goes wrong. I don't need to use or access these photos under normal circumstance. I can't work out how to do this. The only options I seem to be able to find is to either download 1000 images at a time from iCloud to my external HDD (which is near impossible as I can't work out how to select 1000 at once), or download the entire library to my laptop, then backup from there - which I don't have space for on my laptop (photos library is 250GB, laptop entire SSD is 250GB). I'm not especially concerned about preserving file structure or anything like that, I just want to make sure I have all the images in case anything ever goes wrong with iCloud. What is the most sensible option? I'll pay for 3rd party software if that's the only option, though happy to put in some legwork to do it manually if there is a sensible way to do it. I don't mind manually adding future pics to the backup.

In the past it was possible for me to view my own foreign language-study videos on my phone, by importing them into iTunes. But with the change of iTunes to the TV app, that no longer seems to be possible. Instead, Apple suggests storing them in Photos. But upon playback on the iPhone, Apple turns on background music of its own choosing, which drowns out the sound of the videos I am trying to learn from. Very silly design choice. - **Question 1**: Is there any way to turn off the background music permanently? Apple agents don't seem to know of one, but perhaps the community here has an idea. (There have been user complaints about it on Apple's Support site, going back to 2021.) - **Question 2**: Another idea would be to upload an MP3 containing only silence, to be used as "background" music. But it appears there is no way to select any background music other than the few that Apple has chosen for this purpose. Any thoughts?

To free up space on my iPhone I'd like to remove all photos and 'start fresh'. They are currently backed up in iCloud. Is there a way to: a) delete them from the phone, but leaving them in the cloud, and b) re-enable the sync so that all new photos are saved to the cloud too? Point b is crucial as the solutions I found online involve three steps - with a major drawback: 1. disable the iCloud sync 2. delete all photos from phone (as sync is disabled, they will stay on iCloud) 3. the drawback: don't enable the sync ever again, otherwise the photos deleted from the phone will also be deleted from iCloud. (this sounds really stupid but don't want to risk it!)

After uploading a video from iPhone Photos to OneDrive I noticed the vibrancy of the video had substantially changed (e.g. greens were substantially less green, blues less blue). While I would expect a change when viewed on a different device eg PC via Windows, I would not expect a change when viewing the same content on the same iPhone device via the OneDrive app. Why is this happening? Background: For those who might wonder why I'm doing this, it is because the content is rarely accessed and I want to free up some iCloud space. OK, I think I've got a major part of the explanation. My original upload was done without setting Options>"All Photos Data" before sharing. I have checked with [MediaInfo](https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download) . When exported with "All Photos Data" set, it seems to have been converted to: - AVC instead of using HVC1 codec - Has dropped Dolby Vision - Has dropped from 10bits to 8bits bit depth It looks much closer to the original now, however, it still looks a bit lower brightness when opened in OneDrive. On my Windows machine, it looks much closer to the original also, but I realise I have sacrificed efficiency and some bit depth of the original.

I have an iPhone XS max (iOS 14.6) and I'm trying to import photos taken during a FaceTime call to my PC running windows 10. Using the photos app on windows 10, I can import photos and videos fine, and Live Photos taken with the camera will give me a jpeg and mp4. the importing process seems to go through the selected photos fine until it reaches a FaceTime photo, where it will import the still and fail when trying to import the mp4. the import process then terminates, leaving me with whatever photos imported up until that point. I've tried navigating the phone's storage in file explorer (This PC\Apple iPhone\Internal Storage\DCIM) and manually copying the .mp4, but the copied file ends up 0kb in size despite showing a file size on the original copy. I don't want to use a cloud service as my upload speed is terrible and it would take much too long. I can't find any results on Google even remotely similar to my issue, and I couldn't get much help asking on the Apple forums unfortunately.

I was demonstrating Siri yesterday to my friend, showing how it can search the internet for random images (show me an ***image*** of a chickadee, a Volkswagen GTI, Albert Einstein, a pressure cooker, etc.) and it was pulling images from the web until I had it search pit-bulls using the phrase "show me a ***picture*** of a pit bull." Siri found and displayed images of my 2 pit-bulls _from the Photos app on the iPhone!_ It would not find any images when I searched using the dog's names, however. When I tested this same search phrase with "German Shepherd" it found images of three other dogs in Photos, which are shepherd _mixes_, not pure breeds. Most of the selected images were basically face-on (two eyes looking at the camera, floppy ears, etc,) but some are from the side and it found them even though pit #1 has a narrow face, pit #2 has a block-head, and none of the shepherds have the typical erect ears. I know that facial recognition is pretty far advanced in iOS, but I had no idea it could recognize dog breeds, and I was amazed that using "show me a picture" searches the Photos app. What is more disturbing is that I deliberately set Siri not to search inside the Photos app: Does anybody have a clue what is going on? I realize this question may be interpreted as a 'why Apple does something' query, and I will accept a downvote or two. I'll delete the question if folks think its immaterial in the long run. I'm mystified.

I have many photos where the macOS Photos facial recognition / people album has not recognized a face. I press ⌘I to show the Info pallet, then press + Add Faces to add a face circle to the Photo. The face circle says "Click to Name" and I should be able to move and resize it. I cannot move or resize the face circle. Attempting to grab the circle or resize handle results in a thumbnail of the photo being dragged instead, as if to share it to another app. See photo. How can I properly move the "Click to Name" circle above the face? It does not work for any photo in my library macOS 12.5

I have iPhone 11 Pro and MacBook Pro 16", both are powerful enough to handle HEIC/HEVC. I just found that significant part of my iCloud Photo Library has an unoptimized MOV files recorded on previous iPhones: Is there any way to convert library to modern format keeping all the metadata?

The two iCloud Photos storage settings options in iOS > Settings > Photos are: > **Optimize iPhone Storage** > > If your iPhone is low on space, full-resolution photos and videos are automatically replaced with smaller, device-sized version. Full-resolution versions can be downloaded from iCloud anytime. > **Download and Keep Originals** > > This iPhone is currently storing original photos and videos. Turn on Optimize Storage to save device space and keep originals in iCloud. The behavior I want for my iOS device is to save as many photos on-device as possible, but then to fall back to iCloud thumbnails + download on demand functionality when the device is getting close to full. Is that what "Download and Keep Originals" does? Or does it **fill** the iPhone's device space? Does it prevent you from taking new photos if your iCloud library size is bigger than your phone storage size? I have more than 1TB of iCloud photos, so the library will not fit on any iPhone sold by Apple. What is the behavior of "Download and Keep Originals" if the iCloud photo library is bigger than the iPhone device storage? Does buying a 512GB or 1TB iPhone increase the cache that Photos uses when "Optimize iPhone Storage" is on? Or will Photos continue to only use a relatively small cache (~30GB) and "waste" the extra local storage space?

Is it possible to transfer photos from MacOS to iOS (iPad/iPhone) without creating Shared Albums to simply view photos? I ask because I'm trying to limit my iCloud storage space usage. I would like to keep local backups via Finder of the iOS devices. Then I would like to transfer photos to iOS devices as required. I'm looking to see if such a process is available.

Does anyone know how to add 1. screenshots 2. hold to download images from safari 3. camera pics, 4. etc... to a separate album in Photos.app? I would like to do this to facilitate the following process: 1. Save new images on iOS devices to iCloud 2. Keep Folders with Shared Albums on devices, called "C" and "D" 3. When new image on iOS device is saved, it is added to separate album "A" 4. Allow to periodically copy all photos from album "A" to MacOS device for backup, then delete all photos from album "A". This should not impact albums "C" and "D". 5. The goal is to save space in iCloud by periodically moving album "A" to MacOS for archival outside of iPhoto.

So, here’s the thing. I have a new iPhone and an old Mac. iOS 11 (still in beta as of today) and El Capitan (no more updates for this Mac). I use iCloud photo library in both devices. When I take a photo in the new format with my iPhone 7, is there any way to use it right away in my mac, without having to convert it in my iPhone first? I mean, can I get those photos synced through iCloud and converted locally on my Mac? I have tried to find a third party software that could do that kind of conversion, but was not able to find any that would work on El Capitan. Any idea?

I need to find the largest video files, because my videos takes a lot of space but I dont know how to do this: It seems to not to be there any option for filtering by size

The Auto Enhance feature in iOS Photos often leads to results I like. But when I go to share those photos, or to edit them in Lightroom, etc. the adjustments are stripped out. I want to bake the results of the Auto Enhance AI magic into an image that I can then share or edit elsewhere. I'm finding no documentation for the feature, and most of what I discover across the web describes the process for turning the feature off. Last thing: Even taking a screenshot of an auto enhanced image doesn't capture its adjustments. The resulting screenshot is just the bland version I'm trying to avoid.

Is there any way to make creating an iCloud link not take a long time? It often takes 30 seconds to a minute or two to create an iCloud link even for a small number of photos, e.g. 5 photos. I have an iPhone 11 Pro Max with iOs 18.0.1, but it’s been happening for a long time, on older versions of iOs as well. I have 500+ MBPS upload and download, so slow internet is not the issue. I also have Photos set to Optimize iPhone Storage to minimize local storage on my iPhone. With google photos, you create a link almost immediately and can share that link. When people get the link, they can see the photos right away. Thanks for any light you can share on this. It’s making me think about switching to Google Photos, though I have so much in Apple Photos that I’d prefer not to switch.

I receive a video in the app Signal, but I am unable to share this video. I am able to save it in the app Photos, but I am still unable to share this saved video with any app (including Signal, WhatsApp, ...). However, I am able to share photos received in Signal. The error message reads something like: "cannot prepare attachment" (translated) I ask this question for a friend, so I don't use an iPhone myself and am not familiar with it. There aren't any other problems (I could share videos received in Telegram). Does it have to do with app permissions? I am grateful for any ideas.

Information in my photos library seems to prevent Photos.app from effective facial recognition. Part of the reason is Photos.app's ancestor had features that did not age well---like manually selecting faces and naming them. I have a new M4 Mac Mini and want to give it a fair shot at leaving behind past sins. Exporting the photos library, migrating it over, and resetting people and pets are suggestions that do not solve the problem for me. My question solicits feedback about what seems like a good solution. Here it is: 1. Select all photos and videos in my library and export the original, unmodified files with XMP sidecar files into a single folder. 2. Programmatically remove suspect XMP tags, like Person1 in a script. 3. Open or import all the photos and videos in Photos.app on the new machine. Photos.app will incorporate information from the XMP files when constructing a new database, right? The issue is that some user-supplied information, like geographic location, does age well, even if it isn't "baked into" the exif metadata, so I would like to retain that information and remove only certain tags. Consider an XMP file exported along with an unmodified .heif file:

53.243431091308594
         W
         N
         0
         0.0
         17.57313346862793
         2010-01-04T23:41:39Z
         0.0
         2010-01-04T16:41:39-07:00
         
            
               Person Name 1
               Person Name 2
               Person Name 3
            
         
         2024-05-30T18:07:47-06:00

I would need to remove the block:

Person Name 1
               Person Name 2
               Person Name 3

And any other desired tags. Is this OK, and then import all these photo and video files into Photos.app on the new machine and let it get to work? Or perhaps even add new tags to search for "scrubbed" files once in Photos.app? Maybe this workflow is what PowerPhotos and GraphicConverter also do?