Photos for OS X: Access your photos and videos everywhere with iCloud Photo Library
iCloud Photo Library works seamlessly with the Photos app to upload all your photos and videos to iCloud, so you can access them on all your devices.
iCloud Photo Library lets you access all the photos and video in the Photos library on your Mac anytime, anywhere. And any photo or video you take appears on all your devices automatically, organized the same way on every device. Your original, full-resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud, and you can optimize the storage space on your Mac by keeping smaller versions on your Mac. You get 5 GB of iCloud storage for free and additional storage space is available, starting at 20 GB for just $0.99 per month.
With iCloud Photo Library, all the photos and video in your photo library are stored in iCloud, so you can access them from your Mac, iOS devices, and iCloud.com. You must turn on iCloud Photo Library on any computer or device that you want to access your library. Any new photos you add to Photos or take with an iOS device are automatically stored in iCloud. If you make edits, you see your changes right away on any device that has iCloud Photo Library turned on.
To set up iCloud Photo Library, you need to:
Set up an iCloud account. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click iCloud.
Make sure you have the latest version of OS X. To check for OS X updates, choose Apple menu > App Store, then click Updates.
Make sure your iOS devices have the latest version of iOS. Tap Settings, tap General, then tap Software Update.
Note: iCloud Photo Library keeps your photos and videos up to date but doesn’t store your projects or Smart Albums. To keep a backup of these items, make sure you back up your Photos library to another storage device.
Turn on iCloud Photo Library
Choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud.
If you’re not already signed in to iCloud, click Continue, enter your Apple ID and password, and click Sign In. Select whether to use iCloud and Find My Mac, click Next, then close the iCloud Preferences window.
Select the iCloud Photo Library checkbox to turn it on.
Select one of the following options:
Download Originals to this Mac: Stores the original versions of your photos both on your Mac and in iCloud, so you can always see them even if you’re not connected to the Internet.
Optimize Mac Storage: Stores smaller-size files on your Mac when disk space is limited, and keeps the original, full-size photos in iCloud. If you later want to restore the originals back to your Mac, just select “Download Originals to this Mac.” Restoring the original photos may take some time, depending on the size of your photo library.
When you first turn on iCloud Photo Library, your photo library is uploaded to iCloud, which can take awhile, depending on the size of your library and the speed of your Internet connection. You can continue to use Photos while your photos are being stored in iCloud.
iCloud Photo Library stores photos and video from only one library, called your System Photo Library. You can have multiple photo libraries, but you can have only one System Photo Library working with iCloud at a time. For more information, see System Photo Library overview and Use multiple libraries in Photos.
Tip: To temporarily pause uploading or downloading of photos and video to iCloud Photo Library, click the Pause button in iCloud preferences. For example, if you import a lot of new photos and want to wait until later to upload them to iCloud, click Pause. Photos pauses uploading and downloading for 24 hours and then resumes automatically.
Increase your iCloud storage space
Your iCloud account provides 5 GB of free storage space. As your Photos library grows, you can purchase additional space, starting at 20 GB for just $0.99 per month, and increase your storage up to 1 TB.
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click iCloud.
Click the Manage button.
Click Buy More Storage.
Click the amount of storage you want, then click Next.
Type your Apple ID password, then click Buy.
Conserve disk space on your Mac
If you have a large photo library, you can set iCloud Photo Library to conserve disk space by keeping small thumbnail versions of photos on your Mac, instead of the full-resolution photos.
Choose Photos > Preferences, click iCloud, then click Optimize Mac Storage.
After you select this option and Photos determines that your Mac has limited storage space, older full-resolution photos are removed from your Mac keeping smaller thumbnail versions. (As long as your Mac has adequate storage space, the full-resolution photos are kept on your Mac.) Whenever you edit or change a photo, iCloud automatically downloads the full-resolution version again, so you always have access to the original photos. If you later want to restore all your original photos back to your Mac, select “Download Originals to this Mac.” Restoring the original photos may take some time, depending on the size of your photo library.
Important: If you migrated an iPhoto or Aperture library to Photos and still have the iPhoto or Aperture library on your Mac, selecting Optimize Mac Storage might not conserve disk space. To conserve disk space, it’s recommended that you keep a backup of the iPhoto or Aperture library (which now has “.migrated” in the filename) on an external storage device and then delete it from your Mac. Note that you can’t open your Photos library with iPhoto or Aperture, so to continue using iPhoto or Aperture, you must keep the migrated library.
Delete items from iCloud Photo Library
To delete an item from iCloud Photo Library, just delete it from your Photos library: while viewing the photos in a moment, select the item you want to delete and press Delete.
Deleted photos and video aren’t immediately removed from your library; they’re placed in the Recently Deleted album, where they remain for the number of days shown, and then are deleted. You can remove the items immediately using the steps below. Once the items are removed permanently, they’re no longer available on any device that accesses your iCloud Photo Library.
To immediately delete photos from the Recently Deleted album, choose File > Show Recently Deleted.
Select the items you want to delete and click Delete [number] items.
Click OK.
Recover deleted items
When you delete items from your Photos library, they’re placed in the Recently Deleted album, then permanently deleted from your Mac after the number of days shown. You can restore the deleted items within that period. Recovered items appear again on all your computers and devices that access iCloud Photo Library.
Choose File > Show Recently Deleted.
Select the items you want to restore, then click Recover.
Stop using iCloud Photo Library
Important: If you decide to turn off iCloud Photo Library, first be sure to select “Download Originals to this Mac” in the iCloud pane of Photos preferences, so all your original photos can be downloaded from iCloud to your Mac. Be sure to allow time for your originals to download before turning off iCloud Photo Library completely.
Choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud.
Deselect the iCloud Photo Library checkbox to turn it off.
After you turn off iCloud Photo Library, the Photos app on your Mac can’t access your iCloud library, and any edits you make to photos on your Mac won’t appear on your other devices. Your library remains in iCloud and available to other devices that use iCloud Photo Library. To turn off iCloud Photo Library on all your devices, open the iCloud pane of System Preferences, click the Manage button, then click Photo Library. Click “Disable and delete.” Your photos and videos will be deleted from iCloud Photo Library in 30 days, unless you click Undo Delete before that time.