why does my mac need to upload full-res photos to icloud if the photos originated on my iphone?

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Level 1

31 points

why does my mac need to upload full-res photos to icloud if the photos originated on my iphone?

I understand that the photos I take on my iPhone get uploaded (synched) to iCloud. And that those photos in turn get downloaded to my Mac if I choose "Download Originals to this Mac" in the Photos app. That all makes sense.

So why is my Mac tied up with uploading gigabytes of photos that didn't originate on the Mac? Lately the nsurlsessiond upload process has been dominating my network volume (as seen in the Activity Monitor), slowing down everything else.

I don't want to turn off photo synching, but with my turtle-slow upload speed and a very large photos library, I have to do something. Really, I don't understand why my Mac has to upload when synching images that came to it through downloads.

Thanks

JS

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 15.6

Posted on Sep 5, 2025 11:07 AM

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Answer 1

khungui Author

Level 1

31 points

Sep 5, 2025 2:52 PM in response to khungui

Update: turns out it's not photos after all.

I made the mistake of clicking "Desktop and Documents Folders" in iCloud settings. Then realized what I'd done, and clicked it off.

But it won't stop. My computer is in the process of uploading several TB of data to iCloud Drive. I've rebooted, tried everything I can think of, even tried turning off iCloud Drive entirely. But it keeps going. How do I stop the process? Can it be stopped?

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