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4 Iphones- Transfer all photos to ONE MACBOOK Photo Account Libraray

Hi,

I have one MacBook in the family and wish to keep all photos under one MacBook. I have total of 4 iPhone devices with four iCloud accounts. Now for every event, photos are taken on all these devices.


What I want is to transfer all the photos (Original Files) to ONE MACBOOK PHOTO Account and then I can delete photos from all iPhone. This way I have one master database and maybe share it back to all the family members for viewing.


To sum up: Can I consolidate 4 device/accounts photos into one photo account on MacBook and no have duplicate or random photos on multiple devices?

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 12.2

Posted on Mar 14, 2022 11:53 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 14, 2022 12:03 PM

Hi


Unfortunately that is not possible. Icloud is set up as a single user (single account) system.


The only workaround is to have 4 user accounts on your mac, each logged into the icloud account of one of the phones. These 4 accounts would then have to share a single photo library on an external directly connected (no network location) drive. correctly prepared as outlined in the link. For it to work properly this drive would need to be connected whenever any of the accounts was opened - whether or not photos is being used.


Then to sync each phone to the one library, it would be necessary to log into each of the user accounts in turn.


Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)


3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 14, 2022 12:03 PM in response to mk2552

Hi


Unfortunately that is not possible. Icloud is set up as a single user (single account) system.


The only workaround is to have 4 user accounts on your mac, each logged into the icloud account of one of the phones. These 4 accounts would then have to share a single photo library on an external directly connected (no network location) drive. correctly prepared as outlined in the link. For it to work properly this drive would need to be connected whenever any of the accounts was opened - whether or not photos is being used.


Then to sync each phone to the one library, it would be necessary to log into each of the user accounts in turn.


Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)


4 Iphones- Transfer all photos to ONE MACBOOK Photo Account Libraray

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