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Can I turn off synch for my Mac, then delete some photos, and still be able to find them in iCloud?
What happen if I turn on Synch again for my computer - it is going to update the photo library by deleting the ones that are not on the mac anymore?
Is there any other system to store pictures? I bought 2 times Timemachines but both broke down after 3 years of use.
Thanks!
MacBook Pro 13", OS X 10.10
iCloud Photos is not designed to store photos that have been removed from your devices. iCloud Photos is a syncing service. Any photo you delete from a device where iCloud Photos is turned on will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to iCloud Photos. You can potentially reduce the storage space required on a device by turning on Optimize Storage. See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204264
Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.
Or you can buy an external USB drive and move your photos to it. If you want to move your entire photo library to an external drive, see: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Time Machine is backup software that works with any external USB drive but it is not designed to store deleted photos. Time Capsule is hardware that has been discontinued.
iCloud Photos is not designed to store photos that have been removed from your devices. iCloud Photos is a syncing service. Any photo you delete from a device where iCloud Photos is turned on will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to iCloud Photos. You can potentially reduce the storage space required on a device by turning on Optimize Storage. See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204264
Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.
Or you can buy an external USB drive and move your photos to it. If you want to move your entire photo library to an external drive, see: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Time Machine is backup software that works with any external USB drive but it is not designed to store deleted photos. Time Capsule is hardware that has been discontinued.
elsabiet wrote:
Can I turn off synch for my Mac, then delete some photos, and still be able to find them in iCloud?
What happen if I turn on Synch again for my computer - it is going to update the photo library by deleting the ones that are not on the mac anymore?
This will work for a limited time, but it is risky. You have to be very sure, that iCloud Photos has been disabled on your Mac, before you start deleting photos. While iCloud syncing has been disabled, you can access the photos on the web page www.icloud.com .
When you enable iCloud syncing again, the deleted photos will sync back from icloud to your Mac. But it will create a lot of unneccesary network traffic. First, your Photos Library with the remaining photos will upload to iCloud and be merged into the existing iCloud Photos Library. Then the merged library will be downloaded from iCloud to your Mac.
if you need currently more storage on your Mac I would simply move your Photos Library to an external volume to keep it safe, then delete the library on your system volume. Once you do no longer need the local storage, create a new, empty Photos Library and make it again your iCloud Photos Library. The iCloud Library will download to your mac and you will save the lengthy new upload to iCloud.
Thank you very much Leonie, this is definitely the clearest explication I had (much better then form Apple support).
I now understand how it works.
I still have a problem, as I want to keep all of my photos but they take too much space on the Mac (mine only has 250 GB; my husband Dell has 3 Tetra) so bringing the photo library back is not an option. I will look for a remote storage.service.
making space on my Mac by deleting photos I want to keep
