How can i prevent Mac from saving photos from 'photos'?

[Baz88]

I sync my iphone to my mac and i'm trying to import other photos from my old phones aswell, however, i have limited space on my mac HDD to store them all. I know there's icloud, but i also want to have all my photos downloaded on my phone so i don't have to access them through the cloud.

The whole icloud/photo stream thing really confuses me and 'm not entirely sure how they all work. I basically want all my photos on my devices so i can access them without connecting to the cloud, but i also want them backed up.

Can i select which photos in the 'photos' app on mac is stored on my computer? I have photos from several years ago which i still like to keep on my phone, but if possible ideally i'd like to move them to an external HDD to free up space, but still keep them synced between my mac and iphone.

 

[Just_Me_D]

The easiest way would be to sync them via iCloud, but since you don’t want to do that, you will have to use iTunes.

 

[Just_Me_D]

The easiest way would be to sync them via iCloud, but since you don’t want to do that, you will have to use iTunes.

 

[dcoke22]

I don't use iCloud to store my photos either. I have too many photos and am too cheap (I guess) to pay for more iCloud storage. One can, however, use iTunes to sync photos between iOS devices and a Mac.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201313


iCloud Photo Library is convenient for many people. I could try to add my 2¢ worth here, but the crew at iMore has written about it extensively. Probably best just to read what they've written.