iCloud and backing up photos

[calliex]

Got a new M1 MBP 16 about 2 weeks ago. I came from a mid 2012 retina 15.
I transferred my photos from the 2012 to the new one with an external hard drive.
I have noticed by iCloud storage going down. I only have 5 gig.
I find out my photos are being backed up on iCloud. I do not want this to happen.
I went into settings to turn it off and found it to turn it off it wants to delete all my photos on my Mac and other devices.

I have always stored the phots on my Mac and backed them to an external drive.
I do not know how this happened I just need to fix it.

 

[tensixturtle]

What is you try going into Photos --> Preferences --> iCloud --> Download Originals. If your photos all exist elsewhere (e.g. on your external hard drive), this should be fairly risk-free if something should go wrong. This way the photos are saved on your photo library locally as well as iCloud. I'm not sure if it will give the option to delete after that, but if it doesn't, you can do so directly in icloud.com. Good luck, iCloud can be a hot mess sometimes and something similar happened to me a few years ago.