Photos: How do I stop photos taken with my iPhone from ending up in Mac Photos?

[Buadhai]

I don't want to use the Mac Photos app, ever. I don't like it.

Several years ago I foolishly turned iCloud Photos ON. It was a mess. I eventually turned it off. And, I deleted the Photos Library on my Mac.

Today I accidentally opened the Photos app on my iMac (10.14.6) and was surprised to find it full of photos ranging from yesterday back to last century. How did they get there and how do I stop this from happening?

In Photos preferences [General], Importing: Copy items to the Photos library is not checked.

In Photos preferences [iCloud], iCloud Photos is not checked, My Photo Stream is checked. Shared Albums is not checked.

iCloud Photos is turned OFF on all my devices. My Photo Stream is turned ON on all my devices.

Photos on iCloud.com has 60 photos from April and May of this year. I have no idea how they got there.

FWIW, here's my photo workflow:

• I use Dropbox Camera Uploads to transfer photos from my iPhone/iPad to my Mac.
• I delete the junk photos there and then copy the keepers into folders on my Mac.
• I use Google Photos for cloud storage.
• I use CCC for local backup and Backblaze for offsite backup.

 

[Super Spartan]

Settings > Photos

Then turn off iCloud Photos and My Photo Stream

I must be honest though, after having had many photos automatically uploaded when I first got my iPhone, I couldn't find a way to mass delete them from the cloud so I was forced to download an app on my Windows laptop called CopyTrans Cloudly to mass delete all the photos in one go (Had around 3000 photos uploaded)

 

[Buadhai]

Settings > Photos
Then turn off iCloud Photos and My Photo Stream

Well, yeah. Except, I want "My Photo Stream" so I'll have access to the thousand most recent photos on my Mac.

But, apparently, with My Photo Stream turned on, Mac Photos saves them all rather than just the most recent thousand.

Here's the clue: "Your Mac and Windows computers can automatically download and permanently keep every picture from My Photo Stream."

From here: My Photo Stream in iCloud — Apple Support

There doesn't seem to be any way to turn OFF that behavior.

Bummer

 

[Super Spartan]

Well, yeah. Except, I want "My Photo Stream" so I'll have access to the thousand most recent photos on my Mac.

But, apparently, with My Photo Stream turned on, Mac Photos saves them all rather than just the most recent thousand.

Here's the clue: "Your Mac and Windows computers can automatically download and permanently keep every picture from My Photo Stream."

From here: My Photo Stream in iCloud — Apple Support

There doesn't seem to be any way to turn OFF that behavior.

Bummer

This sounds like a glitch, can't you contact Apple Support about this? I just manually update photos to iCloud into folders to keep things organized but off-course each person has his way of doing things. I hate this auto upload crap and want to be in control.

 

[Buadhai]

This sounds like a glitch, can't you contact Apple Support about this? I just manually update photos to iCloud into folders to keep things organized but off-course each person has his way of doing things. I hate this auto upload crap and want to be in control.

As far as I can tell, that's the intended behavior. This is why I dislike Photos. The user has so little control over the way it handles things. The cloud storage management is especially awful.