I have about 60 GBs of photos and videos stored as different folders within a parent folder on iCloud drive. Is there an easy way or software that can copy each folders contents to photos library and create an album with same name as the folder. Thanks
My devices
MBA M1
iPad pro 3rd gen 11 inch
iPhone 16 256GB
iPad Pro
When you choose Photos' File>Import and select folders of pictures, you see this in the Import dialog:
Each folder becomes an album. You actually get an extra layer of folders for some reason, but it works pretty well.
It's OK if the pictures you're importing are in iCloud Drive, but the Library cannot be there.
I wouldn't try to import thousands at a time--you lose a lot of time if it runs into a file that won't go for some reason.
When you choose Photos' File>Import and select folders of pictures, you see this in the Import dialog:
Each folder becomes an album. You actually get an extra layer of folders for some reason, but it works pretty well.
It's OK if the pictures you're importing are in iCloud Drive, but the Library cannot be there.
I wouldn't try to import thousands at a time--you lose a lot of time if it runs into a file that won't go for some reason.
Drag the folder into photos using finder on your Mac.
It can take a while for albums to synchronize with iCloud -- I've seen the albums not appear until well after all the pictures, and vice-versa. When the albums appear, they'll have the right pictures in them.
By default, Photos keeps its own copies of the original picture files. You should double check Photos' Settings>General
to make sure that "Copy items" is checked. The original files are never altered-- Photos records any edits you make in its database and then applies them when you view a picture. The filenames are changed to unique identifiers, though, so you don't have eight different IMG_1234s, and so on, but the original names are stored in the database and displayed from there.
Frankly, it's a bad idea to keep all your eggs in one basket-- do you have a backup?
Thanks Richard. That helped. Now I have all my iCloud Drive folders as folders/albums in photos. You rightly mentioned it adds an extra layer of folders to every album.
For some reason I don't see the newly created albums in my iPad photos app, only on MacBook. Any idea what's wrong ?
Also , now, is it safe to delete the folders from iCloud Drive, now that they are in photos ?
Yeah , once this is done and i confirm i can access all photos from my ipad and phone, i ll move my iCloud drive contents to an external HDD. Thanks Richard, God bless you.
iCloud drive to Photos folderwise
