Move iCloud Photo Library to New Mac?

[ConnYoungy]

Anyone had any success doing this by moving the library file over?

When I open my library on the new Mac and try turning on iCloud Photo Library it prompts me to buy more storage instead of recognising that I'm using the same library as before. Anyone have any suggestions?

The reason I'm not just syncing everything by iCloud is having to wait for 170GB of files to download versus just copying the library from my old Mac

 

[FreakinEurekan]

How did you move it - Migration Assistant?

I haven't tried this; I have it working on additional Macs by just enabling it and letting it sync. But my library is 32GB, not 170GB, and I have fast Internet so I just let it do its thing.

I may replace my primary computer some time next year, which is the one where I definitely want the full library (no optimization, for backup reasons - as discussed in another thread). I'm curious if Migration will move my iCloud-synced Photos Library and Music Library without having to do a full download. If it doesn't, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ah well, it'll just take time. But interestingly, it seemed to work fine on iOS when I got my new phone and used iTunes to backup/restore. I did not have to wait for the Photos to download, like you do when using iCloud to move an iOS backup.

 

[ConnYoungy]

I just copied the iCloud Library file over, but it kept seeing it as a separate library not recognising it as my current one, so in the end I just set it to redownload everything and its taking days. Definitely not as easy as moving my iTunes library was