Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacKey76

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 8, 2011
54
8
When I first got my iPhone 14 Pro Max (release day) I was backing the device up using my Mac and not using iCloud Backup. And I would also sync photos from the Mac Photos app to my phone, so I could see all my albums no matter where I was.

A year or so into the 14 Pro Max, I switched to iCloud Backup, but the photos synced via iTunes stayed on my device.

Now I have upgraded recently to a 17 Pro Max and got it setup by restoring from my iCloud Backup. This resulted in only the photos that were on my phone to begin with being put back, and not any photos synced from the Mac via iTunes (which makes sense as that is turned off now).

I do want all my photos with me at all times if possible, so I started to think about using iCloud Photos.

My situation is thus however.

iPhone has thousands of 10s of thousands of photos taken on the phone in the photo library

MacBook has 10s of thousands of photos copied from phone, other digital cameras, scanned in from prints, and sent to me by others all organised nicely into albums in the Mac Photos app. Some of the albums (like were I create one for a trip) contains photos copied from my iPhone so those photos exist in the Mac Photos app and on my phone in the album.

iPad has no photos on I want to keep.

If I turn iCloud Photos on, on all my devices, what happens? Does everything get merged into one big album, and if so (which is what I want), what happens to the duplicates that exist on phone and were copied to Mac?

Thanks in advance
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: HuskerHarley
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.