Choose Optimize Mac Storage. This downloads low-res photos & videos from iCloud, while uploading full-res images from this library as quickly as possible.

You might need to purchase additional iCloud storage before continuing.

Click the iCloud icon and check the box to turn on iCloud Photo Library. (We’ll address the primary or largest library last.) Click the Photos icon and immediately hold the Option key. You’re given the ability to select a Photos library, which will be the one to merge with iCloud.Sign into the Photosync account, then log into iCloud. You’ll need to use the same iCloud account with each Mac account to sync photos.This is the key to making a Mac sync several Photos libraries. Create an empty Mac user account.Call it Photosync.Copy each additional Photos library to an external drive.But don’t do anything with it yet – we’ll address the primary library last. Usually, this is the largest Photos library, or your current System library. Determine which of your Photos library will be your primary library.Connect to the fastest internet available and plug laptops into the A/C outlet. Uploading & downloading takes a lot of power.We’ll show you how to work around this limitation to combine several libraries.Ĭarefully review the steps outlined below to determine if this is within your skill set. Ordinarily, o nly one Photos library can sync with iCloud Photo Library – this is called the System library. Or perhaps several users on a single Mac have their own Photos libraries. For example, you might have a Photos library on your internal drive and another on an external volume. To combine photos from different devices & Macs, see instructions for enabling iCloud Photo Library on iPhone, iPad & Mac.Īn iPhone or iPad can only have one Apple Photos library.

Even if you don’t need these features in the long term, the capability to merge photos from several computers & devices is useful. Any new images are copied to the cloud, and the photos already in the cloud are added to the Mac or device. Every picture stored on the Mac, iPhone or iPad is compared to the ones already in iCloud Photo Library. With the optional iCloud Photo Library feature, all photos & videos are kept safe on Apple’s servers. The Photos app for Mac, iPhone & iOS is the best place to keep digital pictures and videos.

How to combine mac photo libraries