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anjanesh

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 20, 2010
190
21
Navi Mumbai
I took some photos with my new iPhone 12 Pro Max but I don't see it on my iCloud Drive on my macOS Mojave MBP.
Do we need to explicitly sync them using an app or service etc ? I thought it would automatically get downloaded to my mac.
 
And to confirm, in iCloud online, you see said items?
Also, the MBP is not maxing out on storage, is it?

A few days after I received my iPhone 12 Pro Max, and started taking photos, it seemed to take a while to show on my MBA. Alas, I did not do anything to 'fix it' per se'.
 
All the photos are there at https://www.icloud.com/photos/
But where's the folder on my MBP ?
There is a folder called Photos on my iCloud Drive on my MBP but I had created that Photos folder manually when I bought the laptop and not the iPhone. Was that the problem ?
If not, where is the iPhone's Photos folder on my MBP ?

icloud-drive.png
 
Photos are a special case; they don't show up in Finder's iCloud drive section. The photos sync with the 'Photos.app' application (which is in /Applications). You're supposed to open Photos on your Mac to view, edit, or export your pictures. The actual image files are stored (along with other stuff) in a special "Photos Library" within Pictures (in your Home folder). But again, the intention is that you access them via the Photos app, not via Finder in the file system.
 
Ah...I see - thank you for clarifying this. I was thinking for some reason my photos were not getting synced to my MBP. I can see that my ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary is 551 MB so its there. Thanks.
 
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