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JBrown79 Author

Level 1

88 points

Setting up Photos

Photos is the the only thing I have not switched over to with Apple, for no reason other than habit, and I want to finally do that but have some questions/issues I am running into:

1) All my photos are in folders on my Mac and synced with my other devices. It looks like I cannot sync any folders if I have cloud enabled for my devices, correct? It's either folder sync or Photos through the cloud?

2) If I move all my folders (and subfolders) into "folders"in Photos and then add remove from the folder on my Mac, will that update the Photos folders as well or will I have to update in both locations manually?

3) If the folder on my Mac doesn't update Photos and I choose to delete those folders, where does Photos store the folders/subfolders I have in there locally?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Sep 7, 2020 3:03 PM

Top-ranking reply

markwmsn

Level 6

15,557 points

Posted on Sep 7, 2020 9:07 PM

1) The two types of sync do not coexist well, if at all. Photos attempts to prevent it. I don't know if you can get around that, but you probably shouldn't try.

2) You would have to update both manually. Photos will not rescan any folder just because it was previously an import source. There is no "watch folder" function in Photos.

3) Photos stores albums (which hold only photos and videos) and folders (which hold only albums or nested folders, not photos or videos) in the Photos library. That's true whether or not you delete the import sources. By default, that's also where Photos stores the photos and videos. (It is possible to change that, but it is not a good idea.)

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Setting up Photos

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