Apple's iCloud Photo Library service works seamlessly to sync and back up your images and video across all of your Apple devices to iCloud — but if you're serious about keeping your irreplaceable photos and video safe, you'll want a redundant (second) backup. Because as they always say, you can never have too many backups! And it's better to be safe than sorry, honestly.
Backing up your photos can take the form of a local backup on your own drive or an external source, a secondary online backup, or both. Here's how to do it all.
How to back up iCloud Photo Library to your Mac's hard drive
How to restore your photos using iCloud Photo Library Whether your hard drive crashed or you’re setting up a new Mac, you can use iCloud Photo Library to restore your collection. Jul 23, 2018 There’re several ways to backup iPhone photos. Apple provides iCloud Photo Library and Photos applications on Mac to make the backup photos from iPhone much easier. This is the Apple’s way to backup and sync photos from all iOS devices and Mac with ease. This method is for iPhone with iOS 8.3 or later and Mac OS X 10.10.3 or later. Back up the library in Photos on Mac. Even if you use iCloud Photos, it’s important that you always back up your library locally using one of the following methods. Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. If you ever lose the files in your Photos library, you can restore them from the Time Machine backup.
The best way to back up the images and video in iCloud Photo Library is to make sure you're downloading all your content onto your Mac.
If you don’t have enough iPhone, iPad, or Mac storage for your entire photo library, iCloud Photos includes an option to optimize storage.Photos and videos are still accessible from the Photos. Dec 11, 2018 Photos are some of the most important files people want to keep safe. Storing them in the cloud is nice, but you might also want the peace of mind of having your pictures stored locally. Luckily, it’s easy enough to copy your Mac’s Photos library to an external drive.
Nov 12, 2019 Assuming you use Photos or iPhoto as your Mac image library app, then the library may hold the only copy of every photo you've ever taken with a digital camera or your smartphone. Your image library should probably have its own dedicated backup method in addition to Time Machine to ensure that one-of-a-kind photos are retained for the long term. Jul 27, 2011 How to back up your iPhoto library. Even if you are a regular Time Machine practitioner, it's still a good idea to back up your iPhoto library (or at least parts of it) to a drive or a disc.
Mac Photo Library Management
Note: If you plan to back up your entire digital library to your Mac's hard drive, you'll likely want to do it on a desktop Mac with a 1TB drive or higher. Otherwise, consider backing up to an external drive.
Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
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- Click Photos in the App menu in the upper left corner of your screen.
Select Preferences from the drop-down menu.
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- Click the iCloud tab.
Click Download Originals to this Mac.
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Your Mac will now download full-resolution copies of all your images to your Mac's hard drive, stored inside your Photos app library.
How to back up your iCloud Photo Library content to an external drive
There are two ways to back up your iCloud Photo Library to an external drive: by backing up your Photos library automatically, or manually. (You can also export sections of your library if you don't want to back up the whole thing.)
Back up your Photos library automatically
If you've turned on the Download Originals option for your Photos library, you can back up your Photos library as part of your regular backup routine. Whether you use Time Machine or clone your hard drive using SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy, your Photos library (and all images and video automatically downloaded from iCloud) will be backed up as well. (And if you don't currently use a backup service, well... now's a good time to start!)
Back up your Photos library manually
If you've turned on the Download Originals option for your Photos library but don't want to back it up automatically, you can always copy your Photos library to an external drive at regular intervals.
- Connect an external drive to your Mac via USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt.
Open a new Finder window on your Mac.
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Click on Pictures in the sidebar.
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Drag your Photos Library to your external drive.
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- Wait for it to copy.
Create an external library for backing up iCloud Photo Library
I recommend setting a bi-weekly reminder for these steps, so you keep your Photos library regularly backed up.
Macos Backup Photos Library
How to back up portions of your iCloud Photo Library
Don't want to back up your entire library? You can export individual images and videos to your external drive.
- Connect an external drive to your Mac via USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt.
Open the Photos app.
Source: iMore
- Select the photos and video you want to back up.
- Go to the File menu.
Hover over the Export option.
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Select either Export # Photos or Video or Export Unmodified Original for # Photos or Videos.
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Select an option for File Name and Subfolder Format, and then input your text as desired.
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Press Export.
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- Choose your external drive.
- Press Export Originals.
How to make an online backup of your iCloud Photo Library
Even though your entire iCloud Photo Library is (as the name implies) stored online in iCloud, it's worth considering a second online backup as one of your redundancies.
If you store your entire iCloud Photo Library on your Mac
Good news: If you already use a service to back up your hard drive and you've synced your full iCloud Photo Library to your Mac, it's easy to back it all up. (If not, consider it a good time to start!)
If you don't store your iCloud Photo Library on your Mac
If you don't store your iCloud images locally, this is a bit trickier: you can use the external drive method to export portions of your library to an external drive, then sync that drive to your preferred online backup service, but it's a bit more labor-intensive. In general, this is why I tend to recommend backing up your full library to your Mac or storing a library on an external drive.
Any iCloud Photo Library backup questions?
Have any questions about how to back up your iCloud Photo Library, or about backups or iCloud Photo Library in general? Drop them in the comments below!
March 2020: These are still the proper steps to back up your iCloud Photo Library
Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.
iCloud Photo Library: The Ultimate Guide
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