iCloud What Happens If I Turn iCloud Photos On

[MacKey76]

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

 

[FreakinEurekan]

What will happen, is that all the photos on each Mac, and all the photos actually TAKEN BY (not synced to) iPads and iPhones will be combined into a single library. Duplicates are "usually" avoided but this article shows how to deal with any that show up. Any photos synced to iPad or iPhone will be removed in the process.

Personally I'm a big fan of iCloud Photo Library; I've been using it for several years now.

 

[MacKey76]

What will happen, is that all the photos on each Mac, and all the photos actually TAKEN BY (not synced to) iPads and iPhones will be combined into a single library. Duplicates are "usually" avoided but this article shows how to deal with any that show up.

Personally I'm a big fan of iCloud Photo Library; I've been using it for several years now.

Thank you. Are there any scenarios where turning on iCloud library for the first time will remove photos?

I get that down the line if I remove from one it will remove from others, but at the moment my concern was if I enable it on one device and then the other, will anything get deleted for not being on the other device? How does it know that I'm still setting up the single library as opposed to modifying it?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Thank you. Are there any scenarios where turning on iCloud library for the first time will remove photos?

I get that down the line if I remove from one it will remove from others, but at the moment my concern was if I enable it on one device and then the other, will anything get deleted for not being on the other device? How does it know that I'm still setting up the single library as opposed to modifying it?

Photos that were put onto iOS or iPadOS via Sync (rather than being taken by the camera on the device) will be removed.

Those photos obviously WERE on the computer (had to be, in order to sync them) so as long as they weren't subsequently removed from the computer - they're still there, and will be added to the library from the computer. So no loss there.

 

[Eric Idle]

Photos that were put onto iOS or iPadOS via Sync (rather than being taken by the camera on the device) will be removed.

Those photos obviously WERE on the computer (had to be, in order to sync them) so as long as they weren't subsequently removed from the computer - they're still there, and will be added to the library from the computer. So no loss there.

This makes no sense which is why I absolutely despise iCloud. Fscking years after its been around Apple STILL can't communicate exactly how this idiotic service works.

 

[MBAir2010]

What Happens If I Turn iCloud Photos On​

outside rains jpgs, or HEIC

 

[cynics]

Thank you. Are there any scenarios where turning on iCloud library for the first time will remove photos?

I get that down the line if I remove from one it will remove from others, but at the moment my concern was if I enable it on one device and then the other, will anything get deleted for not being on the other device? How does it know that I'm still setting up the single library as opposed to modifying it?

No, it's a hashed sync process. Delete is a specific command sent from your device on your iCloud for a specific photo/video, it can't be misinterpreted.

Photos not in one library, reseting a device, deleting the photos app, etc will not delete photos. You need to go into the photo app, pic a photo and delete it to initiate the process. Recovering it from recently deleted will recover it on all devices.

Your device library will identically sync though, including uploads, new photos saved there, modifications, and deletions.

If optimize photo storage is turned on you'll have a couple lower quality cached versions for the device display size and whatever you doing (scrolling through full-size photos vs thumbnails). These quickly load them original when looking at them, honestly I never notice except sometimes I see the loading circle. These are a reference to the original file ID so editing/deleting/etc will sync. Saves me about 90-95% storage space on my iPhone, I keep the originals on my Macs.