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How to access iCloud photos on Mac without saving them to Mac

Hello community. I needed to free up storage on my Mac in order to perform an update. I had a ton of photos saved to my Mac and they were taking up most of my storage availability. I deleted them off my computer but I kept them stored on my iCloud. How can I access these iCloud photos on my Mac now? Is there a way to access them through photos on my Mac without downloading them to my Mac? I wish this was more user friendly. Thanks!

MacBook Pro 13″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Aug 25, 2020 10:20 AM

Top-ranking reply

FoxFifth

Level 10

472,191 points

Posted on Aug 25, 2020 10:48 AM

Be aware that if you still had iCloud Photos turned on when you deleted them from your Mac, they would also delete from iCloud. You have approximately 30 days to recover them from Recently Deleted. See: Get help with missing photos - Apple Support

If you turned iCloud Photos off as described in the "How do I turn off iCloud Photos on only one device?" section of Get help with iCloud Photos - Apple Support

before deleting them on your Mac, you could access them by using an internet browser (e.g., Safari) and going to www.icloud.com

and view them in the Photos app there.

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How to access iCloud photos on Mac without saving them to Mac

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