iCloud Photos backups are discouraged by design, and that’s a dangerous problem for users

iCloud photos is an amazing feature that allows you to sync large video and photo libraries across multiple devices. Have a 300GB photo library? With an iCloud subscription and Optimize Storage, you don’t need a 512GB or 1TB iPhone to take your media with you. Nevertheless, iCloud photos backups should not be overlooked.

It is vital to have a backup of all your photos. iCloud Photos can feel like a backup. It’s really just your photo library in a single place — even if you don’t use Optimize Storage. iCloud Photos really doesn’t encourage methods of keeping separate, offline copies of photos and videos.

iCloud Photos backups

The easiest way to save an offline copy your photo collection is to… have a desktop Mac. That’s the thing about iCloud Photos. I would wager that the majority of users are on iPhone – Mac desktops probably rank last. iPad and MacBook are in the middle.

My strategy from seven years ago is still the best for desktop users. Either you have enough internal storage, or you connect enough external storage to have every photo and video if you library download locally. The critical step is to keep a regularly updated Time Machine backup on a separate external drive. Although it is not an attractive option, this provides good backup hygiene to your memories collection.

One thing that has changed since 2015 – storage limits on new MacBooks have increased a lot. 1TB solid-state drives were super premium back then (and they’re still higher tier for MacBooks), but new machines come with options for 2TB, 4TB, and even 8TB SSDs. If you pay the price upfront, it’s possible you can house your whole photo library locally and still backup to an external hard drive with Time Machine on a regular basis.

iPhone and iPad problem

What about iPhone or iPad? You can pay top dollar for 1TB iPhones and iPads, but creating local backups on external storage isn’t really a thing. The benefit of local storage on the Mac is that you can view your library offline and back it up externally; the benefit of local storage on iPhone and iPad is instant access and offline access only.

iCloud backup is available and allows you to retrieve your data from Apple’s servers. This is just iCloud photos without the syncing. Having your data on an Apple server isn’t the same as having your data on a hard drive in your possession.

I recommend this to iPhone users and iPad owners who need a different copy of their photo collection than iCloud Photos. You can ask for a copy, including videos and photos. The request can take a few days before being fulfilled and requires downloading batches of 20GB files from the web. It is technically possible to save these files on external storage connected to an iPhone or iPad. However, as Steve Jobs said, that would be a lot of pain.

Hybrid solution

The solution to this problem isn’t obvious, which is probably why there isn’t an answer in 2022. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t opportunities for improvement.

There are two ways to manage iCloud photos on your Mac. You can either download the entire library from local storage, or you can optimize storage and upload full-resolution videos and photos on-demand. That’s what I consider an all-or-nothing approach; a hybrid approach that uses the best of both worlds would be ideal.

Here’s what I mean.

My solution for my MacBook Air is to have my full 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 detached. That means using Safari for photo access instead of the Photos app (i.e. inferior performance) – the benefit is that it enables local backups without totally sacrificing library access.

Ideally, I could update and sync my local storage photo library each time my external drive is attached. The Photos app could present a web view of my photo library when the drive is detached. It could be called Optimize Storage Lite. The Optimize Storage mode works in the same way as this mode. It uses your available storage to store full-resolution photos and videos. You can browse and download photos and videos from your library in virtually unusable resolutions.

The challenge is harder to solve on iPhone and iPad – I’ll leave that to more creative minds than mine.

Take it from me

My hybrid mode is not the best option. It’s still cumbersome and does not help iPad and iPhone users. iPads are used like MacBooks today, but there’s no Time Machine for iPadOS. Maybe that should change.

Either way, there’s no way to create local storage backups while using Optimize Storage. Take it from me: that’s risky.

I’ve been way less diligent about creating offline backups since switching to a Mac notebook full time in 2019. I’ve also been an iCloud Photos user since day one without issue. I still managed to burn myself late last year.

I got too clever and decided to offload my collection of 40,000 photos and videos to an external drive – the goal was to start a new library and avoid seeing painful memories from a difficult period in my life. It was easy enough. It was easy enough!

Everything went wrong when I made the original library my iCloud Photos Library later. I thought this would upload my photos and videos to iCloud again. Instead, iCloud thought it was supposed to sync the original big library to be the new small library.

It was difficult to explain what had happened to Apple Support. “Have your looked in the recently deleted folder?” I finally got in touch to someone who could understand what had happened. The issue was escalated, then communication went cold. Backup plan: Apple would have to access my iCloud data. Unfortunately, too much time had passed for that to be useful.

9to5Mac’s Take

Let’s just say there is regret, and maintaining proper iCloud Photos backups would have been wise. Moral of the story: keep copies of your important data in multiple places. Be sure one place can’t override the other place. If it can, keep a third place.

It’s also true that Apple should heavily consider ways to make Mac-level backups possible on iPhone and iPad. You can use your iPhone and iPad with no need for a Mac or PC. It’s crucial to own your videos and photos while you wait. However you do it, treat your iCloud Photos as if they could disappear tomorrow, and you wouldn’t care because you have a clone elsewhere.