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Photos App

Davidharry

Davidharry

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 5, 2018
198
6
South Wales
Good day to all.
Little while ago I had some issues with my photos. Anyway all sorted now.
What I would like to know the best way to backup all my photos to an external drive,I do use the time machine and iCloud of course.
Any help please.
Many thanks.

David.
 
Hi David,

Both Time Machine and iCloud are a good way to backup, but more backups are always better.

Locate the Photos Library and make a backup of that file.

You can access the library by going into your home folder and then then pictures folder.

The easiest way to get there is open Finder > Click Go in the menubar > Click Home > Open the Pictures folder.

The Photos library will look like this and contains all your photos:

Screen Shot 2021-01-13 at 6.53.19 PM.png

Copy this to an external drive to make a full backup of your Photo's library.

If you want to check the size of the library prior to copying, right click and select "Get Info"
 
Hi thanks for your reply.
May I ask another question regarding the photos app. I have a ipad and a iPhone and all the photos on the cloud are showing up on iPad and iPhone but not on the MacBook there are no albums showing on MacBook but showing on the iPhone and iPad.
could you pleas help me out with the problem.
David. 🤞🏻
 
Sure, close the photos app.

Go into iCloud in system preferences and see if photos is turned on.
 
Many thanks. Yes it is checked.
just one point when I go into photo system preferences the iCloud tab a box comes up with the following.
iCloud features for photos are only available in the system photo library.

Does that mean anything.
Thanks.
Also the general tab use as system photo library is greyed out?
 
Last edited:
ThankYou Very Much.
Followed the info on the link you provided. And yes there as three library folders there I chose the one.What shall I do with the other two?. Leave well alone or move to bin so it won't confuse things again?
A Very Big Thanks to you for your assistance.
David.
As a matter of interest what part of the world are you? Im in South Wales UK In Lockdown.
Once again Thanks.
 
Glad I could help David!

Ideally you want just one to prevent any confusion later on. However you may want to check that they are actually empty and don’t contain any photos that your primary library doesn’t have.

So I’m originally from the UK, have parents in Carmathen but have been living in Florida for the last few years.
 
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One last question.if I decide to delete one of the photo library what would be the best way to get it done?
Thanks
David.
 
If there is nothing in the photo library you would just drag it to the trash. The library is self enclosed so everything’s inside 😀
 
There are photos in one of the three,I selected one of the three as default.The one that I have in mind has a 2018 date.
Whats the best
Thanks.
 
If the other two are empty that’s fine, keep that as your default - just make sure that is the one that has all the photos from your iPad and iPhone in.

There’s nothing wrong with keeping the others just in case to make sure.
 
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