iCloud Photos is a fantastic feature for syncing large libraries of photos and videos across all of your devices. Do you have a 300 GB photo library? With an iCloud subscription and Storage Optimization, you don’t need a 512GB or 1TB iPhone to take your media with you. However, iCloud Photos backups should not be ignored.
Keeping a local backup of your photo library is very important. iCloud Photos can feel like a backup. It’s really just your photo library in one place, even if you’re not using Optimize Storage. iCloud Photos really doesn’t encourage methods of storing separate offline copies of photos and videos.
iCloud Photo Backups
The easiest way to keep an offline copy of your photo library is… to have a desktop Mac. This is what iCloud photos are about. I’d bet that most users use iPhones – desktop Macs are probably in last place. iPad and MacBook exist in the middle.
My seven year old method remains the best strategy for desktop users. Either you have enough internal storage, or you plug in enough external storage to have all the photos and videos if the library is loaded locally. An important step is to store a regularly updated Time Machine backup on a separate external drive. It’s not the most attractive method, but it’s good backup hygiene for your collection of memories.
One thing that has changed since 2015 is that the memory limits on the newer MacBooks have increased significantly. Back then, 1TB SSDs were super-premium (and they’re still a higher tier for MacBooks), but newer machines come with 2TB, 4TB, and even 8TB SSD options. If you pay the price up front, you may be able to host your entire photo library locally and still back up regularly to an external hard drive using Time Machine.
problem with iphone and ipad
How about iPhone and iPad? You can pay big bucks for a 1TB iPhone and iPad, but creating local backups on external storage isn’t really a problem. The advantage of local storage on a Mac is that you can browse your library offline and back it up externally; The advantage of local storage on iPhone and iPad is instant access and offline-only access.
iCloud Backup exists and allows you to restore your data from Apple servers. However, it’s just iCloud Photos without the sync component. Having your data on an Apple server is not the same as having your data on a hard drive at your disposal.
My best advice for iPhone and iPad users who want a separate copy of their photo library outside of iCloud Photos is this: You can request a copy of your iCloud data, including photos and videos, as files. The request may take several days to complete and requires the download of 20 GB file packages from the Internet. Technically, these files can be downloaded to external storage that connects to your iPhone or iPad, but as Steve Jobs once said, it’s a pain in the ass.
Hybrid solution
The solution to this problem is not obvious, which is probably why there will be no answer in 2022. However, this does not mean that there is no room for improvement.
Right now, there are two options for working with iCloud Photos on Mac: upload your entire library with local storage, or optimize storage and download full-resolution photos and videos on demand. This is what I consider the all-or-nothing approach; a hybrid approach that uses the best of both worlds would be ideal.
That’s what I mean.
My solution for my MacBook Air is to put my complete photo library on an external hard drive so it can be cloned or backed up with Time Machine. iCloud Photos is available as a web app when the hard drive is turned off. This means using Safari to access your photos instead of the Photos app (i.e., slower performance) – the advantage is that it allows you to create local backups without completely compromising library access.
Ideally, I could update and sync my photo library to local storage every time an external drive is connected. The Photos app can present a web view of my photo library when the drive is offline. Think of it like Storage Optimization Lite. Optimize Storage mode is not too different from how this mode works; this feature uses the available storage to store full resolution photos and videos. Nearly unusable low-resolution versions of your library are used to view and download on-demand photos and videos.
This task is harder to solve on the iPhone and iPad – I’ll leave that to more creative minds than me.
Take from me
My hybrid mode might not be the best solution; it’s still clunky and doesn’t help iPhone and iPad users. Today, iPads are used like MacBooks, but Time Machine for iPadOS doesn’t exist. Perhaps this needs to be changed.
In any case, when using Optimize Storage, it is not possible to back up local storage. Trust me, it’s risky.
I’ve become a lot less diligent about offline backups since I completely switched to a Mac laptop in 2019. I’ve also been using iCloud Photos with no problems since day one. I still managed to get burned at the end of last year.
I got too smart and decided to upload my collection of 40,000 photos and videos to an external drive – the goal was to start a new library and not see painful memories of a difficult period in my life. Easy enough! My original Photo Library was on an external drive and my new Photo Library local to my Mac started from scratch.
Things went wrong when I decided later to make the original library my iCloud Photos library. I thought this would upload my photos and videos to iCloud again. Instead, iCloud decided that the original large library should be synced with the new small library.
Explaining what happened to Apple Support was quite difficult. “Have you looked into your recently deleted folder?” I eventually contacted someone who understood what had happened. The problem escalated, then communication cooled down. My backup plan requested iCloud data from Apple. Unfortunately, too much time has passed for this to be useful.
Sight
Let’s just say there is a regret and it would be wise to maintain proper iCloud photo backups. Moral of the story: keep copies of important data in multiple places. Make sure one seat cannot replace another seat. If possible, keep the third place.
It’s also true that Apple should seriously consider making Mac-level backups possible on iPhones and iPads. Quite often it is possible to use an iPhone or iPad without a Mac or PC. In the meantime, it’s important to take responsibility for your photos and videos. Whatever you do, treat your iCloud photos like they might be gone tomorrow and you don’t care because you have a clone elsewhere.
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