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I have 17,000 pics/videos in the cloud and I want to get them all out and onto an external hard drive. (the storage is full, and these are all pictures of my son! ) Is there an easy way to do this? Just 700 photos (you can't do more than 1000 at a time) is taking over 5 hours!
MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.14
Export photos from system photo library to a desired location say download folder in finder , then connect an external hard drive to the Mac then transfer the photos from download folders into the external hard drive , and all your photo data is saved .See this article Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
If you desire how many selected photos see this article Select and deselect photos in Photos on Mac - Apple Support are to be deleted in system photo library folder , you should select them and delete to recently deleted folder see this article Delete photos or recover deleted ones in Photos on Mac - Apple Support ( its your choice to delete them permanently immediately or after 30 days the photos will be removed from the iCloud server ) .
In this way the complete photo data is still on external hard drive , but the space is reduced in photo library .
See this article to export photos Export photos, videos, and slideshows from Photos on Mac - Apple Support
Export photos from system photo library to a desired location say download folder in finder , then connect an external hard drive to the Mac then transfer the photos from download folders into the external hard drive , and all your photo data is saved .See this article Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
If you desire how many selected photos see this article Select and deselect photos in Photos on Mac - Apple Support are to be deleted in system photo library folder , you should select them and delete to recently deleted folder see this article Delete photos or recover deleted ones in Photos on Mac - Apple Support ( its your choice to delete them permanently immediately or after 30 days the photos will be removed from the iCloud server ) .
In this way the complete photo data is still on external hard drive , but the space is reduced in photo library .
See this article to export photos Export photos, videos, and slideshows from Photos on Mac - Apple Support
Reopen Photos with the option/alt key held down and create a new system Library on the external hard drive. If necessary, open Photos, go to Photos/Preferences/iCloud and set up syncing. Then go to System Preferences/iCloud, sign in, and check Photos syncing. Allow plenty of time for the photos to sync to the external drive. Once all the Photos have synced to your external hard drive, quit Photos. You should now have a complete compilation of your photos (like a Master Library).
Reopen Photos with the option/alt key held down and select the Library on your internal hard drive as the system Library. You can now delete photos from your devices/computer/iCloud while maintaining a master copy on the external hard drive. Added photos can be exported from the internal hard drive Library and imported into the Master Library. Turn off iCloud syncing when reverting to the Master Library.
Help! iCloud full and need to transfer all photos to external hard drive!
