How to backup your Photos library in macOS Sequoia

Your Photos library might sync with iCloud, but in macOS Sequoia, making a manual backup is still a smart way to guard against deletion or corruption. Here’s how to keep your memories safe.

Apple’s cloud service mirrors your library across devices, but if something gets deleted or corrupted, it vanishes everywhere. That’s why a manual, local backup of your Photos library is critical.

Photos replaced iPhoto in 2015 but the local library structure remains largely the same. In macOS Sequoia, backing it up involves ensuring originals are downloaded, then copying the full library to an external or secondary location.

How to select the correct Photos library on Mac

To make sure your Mac’s Photos app syncs properly with iCloud, it’s important to designate the correct System Photo Library. If this isn’t set, you might encounter the error, “iCloud features for Photos are only available in the System Photo Library,” preventing iCloud Photos from syncing on your Mac.

The error usually pops up when users primarily use iPhones or iPads for photo management and overlook the Mac’s library settings. In such cases, the Mac’s Photos app may not be linked to the iCloud Photo Library, leading to synchronization problems.

1. Quit the Photos app.
2. Hold down the Option key and open the Photos app.
3. In the Choose Library window, select the library you wish to use.
4. Once the library opens, go to the Photos menu and select Settings.
5. Under the General tab, click “Use as System Photo Library.” If this option is grayed out, the current library is already set as the System Photo Library.

After setting the System Photo Library, navigate to the iCloud tab in the Photos settings and ensure “iCloud Photos” is checked to enable synchronization.

How to download full-resolution originals to your Mac

Photos is the app that manages your photo library on your Mac, while iCloud Photos is the optional sync service that keeps your images and videos up to date across all Apple devices.

Turning on iCloud Photos stores your library in the cloud, but unless you also download originals to your Mac, the local Photos app may only contain lower-quality previews.

1. Open the Photos app.
2. Go to Photos, Settings and select the iCloud tab.
3. Enable Download Originals to this Mac.

That disables the “Optimize Mac Storage” setting and triggers a download of your complete photo library. Depending on your collection, this could require tens or hundreds of gigabytes of local storage.

Keep your Mac plugged in and online until it finishes downloading. To prevent it going to sleep, go to System Settings, Battery, then click Options and tick “Prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter when the

display is off.”

If your Mac doesn’t have enough space to store your full library, consider using an external drive as your System Photo Library. Alternatively, you could use an external drive so that you temporarily freeing up space until the download completes.

Manually back up to an external drive

Once all originals are stored locally, you can copy your Photos library to an external hard drive or network share.

1. Quit the Photos app completely.
2. In Finder, open your Pictures folder and locate Photos Library.photoslibrary.
3. Connect an external drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
4. Drag the Photos Library file onto the external drive and wait for the copy to complete.

With all originals now stored locally, you can manually copy your Photos Library to an external drive. Quit the Photos app first, then drag the file named Photos Library.photoslibrary from your Pictures folder to the external disk.

Don’t disconnect the drive or let your Mac sleep during the transfer, as that can corrupt the backup. Once the copy completes, you’ll have a full duplicate of your photo library, including high-resolution images, videos, and metadata.

For long-term storage, never use a drive that’s also used for Time Machine. Apple warns against storing Photos libraries on backup volumes managed by Time Machine.

If you plan to open the Photos Library directly from the external drive, rather than just storing it as a backup, you’ll need to adjust the drive’s permissions to prevent access errors.

1. Right-click the external drive in Finder and choose Get Info.
2. Check the box labeled “Ignore ownership on this volume” at the bottom of the info window.

The option tells macOS to treat the drive’s contents as universally accessible, which avoids Photos permission errors tied to user accounts.

Back up to another location on your Mac

We don’t recommend this, but if you don’t have an external drive, you can still create a secondary copy of your Photos Library by storing it on a separate volume or partition on your Mac. It won’t protect against full drive failure, but it can offer a layer of isolation in case of software corruption, user error, or accidental deletion.

To do this, you may want to create a second volume or partition using Disk Utility.

1. Open the Disk Utility app from your Applications > Utilities folder.
2. Select your internal disk (usually called “Macintosh HD”) in the sidebar.
3. Click the plus (+) button to add a new APFS volume, or use the Partition tab for an HFS+ partition if needed.
4. Name the volume (such as “Photo Backup”), choose the format (APFS recommended), and click Add.

Adding a new volume to an APFS disk doesn’t erase existing data, which makes it a safe way to separate your backup from your boot volume without wiping your Mac. Once the new volume appears in Finder, quit the Photos app and copy Photos Library.photoslibrary from your main Pictures folder to the new volume.

While this setup gives you an extra copy in a separate space, it’s still on the same physical drive. So if the drive itself fails, you’ll lose both versions. For full protection, use this method as a temporary measure or in combination with an external backup.

Use Time Machine as an additional safeguard

Time Machine can serve as a valuable second layer of protection for your Photos Library. As long as the library is stored on your Mac’s internal drive, Time Machine includes it in regular backups automatically.

You’ll get versioned restore points that a manual copy alone can’t provide.

1. Make sure your Photos Library is located on your internal disk, not on an external or network volume.
2. Connect a Time Machine-compatible drive and turn on Time Machine in System Settings.
3. Let Time Machine run scheduled backups or start one manually.
4. If needed, use Time Machine later to browse through earlier versions of your Photos Library and recover deleted or changed content.

Don’t store your active Photos Library on the same drive used for Time Machine. Apple warns that doing so can lead to corruption or backup failures, because Time Machine treats the entire drive as a backup destination.

For Time Machine to work correctly, your Photos Library must remain on your Mac’s internal storage, in the default location, preferably.

The Photos app is designed to sync, not to archive. If a file is deleted or corrupted on one device, the change propagates to all connected devices. That’s why local backups are essential.

We recommend maintaining both a manual backup and a Time Machine backup of your Photos library. Even if iCloud fails, you’ll have full-resolution protection and historical recovery options.