iCloud Photo Library aims to deliver on the promise of having all your photos available on all your devices all of the time.
To accomplish this, iCloud Photo Library works with Photos for iOS and Photos for OS X, as well as iCloud.com, as the glue that holds everything together. Shoot a video on your iPhone, take a picture with your iPad, import from your DSLR on your Mac, and all of it goes up to Apple's servers and is made available on all your other devices. Part backup, part sync, part storage optimizer, if you let it, iCloud Photo Library can make micromanaging your pictures and videos a thing of the past. Here's how!
- iCloud Photo Library review
- iCloud Photo Library: Explained
- iCloud Photo Library and Photo Stream: What's the difference?
- Should you use iCloud Photo Library?
- What iCloud Photo Library storage plan should you choose?
- How to set up iCloud Photo Library on iPhone or iPad
- How to set up iCloud Photo Library on your Mac or PC
- How to access iCloud Photo Library on the web
- How to use iCloud Photo Library to save storage space on your Mac
- How to use iCloud Photo Library to save storage space on your iPhone and iPad
- How to back up iCloud Photo Library
- How to delete pictures and videos from iCloud Photo Library
- How to use iCloud Photo Library while offline
- How to use iCloud's Family Sharing with Photos for OS X
Should you use iCloud Photo Library?
Apple's new photo sync option, iCloud Photo Library, lets you seamlessly access, manage, edit, and share images and video from any device you own. It's free to use — though if you want to sync any real amount of data, you're going to have to pony up for a paid iCloud storage plan. Now that Photos for OS X is here, we've had a lot of people ask whether they should turn on iCloud Photo Library: Is it safe? Is it secure? Is the cost of an iCloud plan worth it? After several months of both iOS and Mac beta-testing, here are our thoughts.
What iCloud Photo Library storage plan should you choose?
iCloud Photo Library stores all your pictures and videos on Apple's servers so they're available to you on all your devices. If you optimize storage, it can save you a lot of space on your iPhone, iPad, or even your Mac. It will, however, take up storage on your iCloud account. Apple gives 5 GB to everyone for free, but if you've got a photo library of any size, you'll almost certainly need more. Especially since iCloud Drive, iCloud email, and iCloud backup all pull from the same storage pool. Apple offers additional storage, from 20 GB to 1 TB, on a monthly subscription basis. How much you need will depend on how much you can afford — as online options go, it isn't cheap — and how much you need. Here are your options!
How to set up iCloud Photo Library on iPhone or iPad
iCloud Photo Library lets you store all your pictures and videos online but still have fast, local access on your iPhone and iPad. It does that by uploading everything you take with or save to your iPhone or iPad and downloading everything you import on your Mac. You can either keep all of it on your device, or you can let iCloud Photo Library intelligently manage your storage for you, keeping recent, favorite, and frequently accessed pictures and videos available and leaving older and seldom accessed content up on the cloud, just a tap away. It also serves as a backup and syncs your non-destructive edits. In other words, iCloud Photo Library helps you make the most of your pictures, videos, and your devices. All you have to do is enable it!
How to set up iCloud Photo Library on your Mac or PC
If you want your Mac's photos to wirelessly sync to all your other iOS devices and computers, you want to set up iCloud Photo Library. Apple's photo sync service lets you back up your images on all your devices as well as access them — online or offline — on said devices. If you're willing to pay for the extra iCloud storage space, you can store an incredible amount of photos and videos, all accessible at the touch of a button or multi-touch screen. Here's how to set it up on your Mac with Photos for OS X as well as how to access your images from a PC or older Mac.
How to access iCloud Photo Library on the web
iCloud Photo Library lets you easily access all your pictures and videos from anywhere, including the web. Sure, the Photos apps for iOS and OS X are fast, convenient, and pack a lot of features, but there might come a time when you don't have either available to you. That's when iCloud Photo Library being part of iCloud really comes in handy — because you can access everything you have online straight from any web browser you have available to you. All you need is a connection, your Apple ID, and iCloud.com.
How to use iCloud Photo Library to save storage space on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac
Images and videos eating up all the storage on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac? With iCloud Photo Library you never have to worry about running out of space again. Thanks to "optimized storage", Apple can intelligently keep track of and manage your free space, ensuring your recent, favorite, and frequently accessed images and videos are immediately available on your device, while your older, less frequently accessed one are kept safely off your device and up on Apple's servers, just a download away. It's not magic, but if you're tight on space, it'll absolutely feel that way.
- Read how to iCloud Photo Library to save storage space on your Mac
- Read how to use iCloud Photo Library to save storage space on your iPhone and iPad
How to back up iCloud Photo Library
iCloud Photo Library stores all of your images and videos online, but what if you also want an additional backup? The old saying, when it comes to backups, is one place is no place. With something as precious as your photo and video collection, you want to make sure you don't just have a backup to iCloud Photo Library, but a backup of the backup. "One local, one cloud" is the minimum. "Two local, two cloud" is the recommendation. Luckily, Photos for OS X lets you keep a copy of all your originals, all on your Mac. If you have at least one good-sized hard drive, that makes "one local, one cloud" easy. If you're already backing up that Mac as well, then it makes "two local, two cloud" take care of itself as well.
How to delete pictures and videos from iCloud Photo Library
The great thing about all your pictures and videos being online is that sometimes all your pictures and videos are online... iCloud Photo Library makes sure all the pictures and videos of all the people and places you love, and all the memories you want to keep safe are backed up and available on all your devices, iPhone, iPad, and Mac. If you've got stuff you simply don't like, or personal pictures and videos that you don't want to keep and don't want available, you can delete them. That way, neither you nor anyone else is at risk of ever seeing them again.
How to use iCloud Photo Library while offline
Photos for OS X and iOS let you sync your library to iCloud, so that you can have thousands of photos at your beck and call without having to store them locally on your machine or device. But what about when you don't have Wi-Fi or cellular data readily accessible? Never fear: Whether you're stuck on a plane, in a tunnel, or simply want to show off photos when you don't have internet access, here's how you can still view and manage your iCloud Photo Library images.
Reader comments
How to use iCloud Photo Library: The ultimate guide
Does anyone know if Photos for Windows will be released at some point?
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This is BS. Apple promised Windows support. No, icloud dot com is not Windows support. No more 0.99 from me!
You are right. I want to retrieve photos from iCloud. Do you know this way?
http://www.recovery-tool.com/ios-recovery/recover-photos-from-icloud.html
Rene, is there a way to "share" an entire library with someone? For instance, my iCloud Drive is 200 GB. My iMac that stores iTunes and iPhoto (now Photos) libraries use my ID as the default.
On our iPhones, my wife and I use our own Apple IDs. Is there a way I can grant her access to all our pictures?
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I'll second that. It seems in the last few years Apple is geared towards 'single users'. Family Sharing is a far cry from a solution to this.
I want to be able for my wife and I to have separate iCloud accounts but share all photos in the library and both iCloud accounts upload photos to the shared / central library.
We both have separate iCloud accounts and a "shared" iCloud account for mail, contacts and calendars...but not photos because we can't. GRRRRRR.
+1
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Rene, I notice that Photos doesn't seem to allow you to switch libraries easily like iPhoto did. I have to quit Photos and reopen while holding down the option key. Since I normally have three photo libraries I switch between at any given time, I'm hoping Apple adds this feature back into the menu bar soon.
stuck in updating library, uploading 1095 photos. so annoying, apple can't never get it right. itunes match is a mess, now photos is a mess too. i wonder who's behind all this.
I have 16,000 + photos. The first couple of days was about 2,000/day, then over the weekend, it finished quickly. Took about 5 days total for all to appear.
Patience is my best advice. they will upload (assuming your iCloud Drive is big enough)
Oh boy. I only have 1533 photos, should i leave my mac turned on and plugged overnight? Because im uploading my labrary from my mac.
I would. It might finish overnight.
I am puzzled by what I am seeing. I have a total of 436 photos and 1 video uploaded in iCloud.
According to my storage, I have 4.5 GB's available.
Yet, when I click on manage storage.
I see 1 GB of storage, with 546 MB available?
Anyone?
My photos aren't uploading at all... Been stuck on 17,000 items since installing. Activity Monitor shows zero activity for Photos, even after several restarts...
Any suggestions anyone?
Any luck with this? I have 29000 images on my Mac and 9000 on my phone. These two are synced to the same account but I have not seen the two merge yet. I have left the Mac online for a week without any luck!
Yes - finally completed last weekend.
What I *think* happened is that large files uploaded first, hence the slow pace. The more it progressed, the faster it went until the last few thousand finished in an hour or so.
My advice: be patient! Now it's worked, it's working brilliantly. All my photos showing up on my iPhone and iPad.
Hi Rene! I listen to you every week on MacBreak Weekly and I love your commentary and insight. I know it's all about the Apple Watch right now but I have a problem with iCloud Photo Library that I can't find a solution to anywhere else, on Apple's forums or on the Mac Rumors forums, so I thought I'd try here: When I take new photos on my iPhone, I can't get them to automatically show up on my Mac, like they used to, before I upgraded to Photos. I have activated iCloud Photo Library, and it seems to be working. If I check iCloud.com, the photos from my phone show up there. I don't even know how to characterize the problem. Is it a Photo Stream sync issue or an iCloud Photo Library sync issue? I see a lot of users having this problem, and some say it got resolved by "turning off the iCloud Photo sync" but I'm not even sure exactly what that means.
Read my comment down below and I hope it helps. I personally decided to disable iCloud Photo on my phone as it screws up everything and fills up your storage space. Check out my comment below and see if that makes sense.
Cheers
It seems to be a common complaint, I purchased a storage plan on icloud because my iPhone 6 filled up too quickly but the usability of icloud is clunky at best and uploading doesn't seem to work from anything other than my phone? is there a remedy for this? Trying to upload highrez photos to my icloud from a desktop computer so that i can access on my phone for posting but frustrates me everytime I try to do this. Suggestions anyone?
I have a similar issue. I have loaded all 25k+ photos into iCloud and have been using the photos app on my iPhone 6 to sync up new photos to the cloud. It has been working great for a couple of months and now it is stuck at uploading the 5 most recent pictures. It says 5 photos to upload for the past couple of days. New photos sync fine from iPad and out to Google Photos, so it is not the local wifi. Tried all the normal reboots and restarts to no avail. This happened also a couple of weeks ago and I had to re-load and re-sync all the photos from the iPhone to fix it (which took several days). Any help on this? When it works, it works well, but it is very frustrating when it does not. Google Photos is a MUCH better service at this point. ~frustrated~
Agree Google Photos much better. I have same problems with iCloud. I have "optimize photos" set on my iPhone so it should be uploading my pics to the Cloud and saving me room on my iPhone. Every now and then I'll log into iCloud to see if my pics are there, it takes a while. But my iPhone remains very low on space ~62MB and shows 3.2GB of photos on my iPhone. Seems like my iPhone is not being optimized at all. Yes, I'm on WiFi.
Hi Rene, I have a slightly different issue to solve.
I setup shared libraries so people can add their photos for me to use in videos. I need to download all the pics to my mac but I don't want to add them to my personal photos library because I then need to find and delete them. Have tried the obvious ways but no solution... any ideas?
I enjoy you on macbreak!
I really need to see the number of items in each folder, I haven't seen that question addressed anywhere. The number of items was shown in iPhoto.
Good share. Thanks.
I'm re-posting this from another thread on here:
I've finally discovered the easiest way to use this bull crap iCloud photo garbage. These are the steps if you use a MAC and do not want iCloud screwing up your phone:
1. Disable ALL iCloud Photos from all portable devices. Especially if they are all under one account.
2. On every mobile device, ENABLE MY PHOTO STREAM
3. Go to PHOTOS on your mac and open preferences.
4. Enable iCloud photo library, enable download to this mac, enable my photo stream.
5. Upgrade your iCloud photo storage to whatever you think is best and what you can afford.
6. Let computer sync to iCloud photo.
7. Start using time machine with a separate drive as another "failsafe backup"
Here is how everything will work if you did all the steps above (arrows are how the your photo data travels):
1. Take a photo -> camera roll & photo stream
You now have two copies, one that is on your phone and one in photo stream. This will show up on all devices that are under the same account that have photo stream turned on. Anyone can now delete these photos from photo stream if they are on the same account. The photo will still be on your camera roll. If you delete it from camera roll it will delete it from photo stream.
2. Photo stream -> computer
At home, turn on computer and your photo in photo stream will show up in Photos. If you have deleted it from your photo stream before turning on your computer it will NOT show up in photos.. but it will still be physically on your iPhone camera roll. Think of Photo Stream as a wireless "quick sync" to your computer. If you have deleted the photo from photo stream and it's still in your camera roll, you can just plug in your phone and sync it that way. ALL VIDEO must be synced via a wire separately.
3. Computer -> iCloud photo library
If you have your mac enabled with iCloud Photo Library and you have chosen enough storage, all your photos in your library will now be backed up. You should be able to delete from your computer library OR from cloud.com and it will erase it on both. IT WILL NOT AFFECT YOUR PHONE if you have everything setup this way.
Now you can happily mess with your photos and have plenty of backups. Basically I am using iCloud photo as a cloud backup service and not a service to backup my phones photos. If you don't want to use iCloud photos as a backup, just don't enable it on any device, use Time Machine like I suggested and you will be fine. I am using both as a super failsafe. Another suggestion is if you see something from another family members phone, you can save that photo into your camera roll from photo stream and now you have another backup of that photo (just in case you are on vacation, etc..) You can also use the "Family Sharing" album as well to do kind of the same thing. But since everyone in my family is all under one account, this feature is useless.
Once again:
Take a photo -> Camera roll -> Photo stream -> Computer -> iCloud Library
Now I have plenty of storage space on my iPhone!!! YAY!!! No more stupid messages saying my phone is full!!
DISADVANTAGE = I still have to manually sync videos and there is no backup of my videos until I have put them on my computer.
I hope this has helped people out there cus this service is really frustrating and it could have been setup like iTunes Match where you have a cloud photo and you can download it if you want. iCloud photos does this but not really as it's forcing you to see everything as one unit. In iTunes Match, I am able to still delete a song from my phone and it asks "delete from iCloud?". WHY CAN'T PHOTOS DO THE SAME THING??
Johnny Lloyd Rollins I've been searching the net high and low to figure out what you've explained above, thanks!! One question: after following your steps, all photos will be on Photos and iCloud Photo Library, correct? So then when I delete a photo from my iPhone will it delete from "all devices" including on my Mac?
2 issues. On my Windows computer, the iCloud Library is not complete. Is this because I was backing up to computer and switched to cloud at some point? It used to backup to Dropbox, but isn't anymore for no apparent reason. AND if I delete photos from my phone, will they delete from the icloud library? I've never been clear on that. It makes no sense.
I think iCloud is not easy to use on the Windows, when the network is busy, I cannot open my iCloud smooth. That's really a trouble.