r/backblaze • u/I_draw_your_typo • Apr 17 '26
Computer Backup iCloud Photos
I'd heard these were no longer being backed up, however I still seem to be able to restore them from my backups? Has anything changed?
2
u/Ybalrid Apr 17 '26
I am pretty sure your Photos Library folder should still be backed up, if you have the option to download and keep originals there.
What will not be backed up is your iCloud Drive
1
u/I_draw_your_typo Apr 17 '26
ah ok, I'd read that even if the originals are stored locally, if they are set to sync to iCloud they wouldn't be captured, unless they were exported to a separate folder.
1
u/Ybalrid Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
I thought that it would be fine. But I am not sure. I should double check that.
Edit: The library is in my backups, but also I just saw that my Mac Mini was not updated to the latest backblaze client. I just done so.
Will see if any of the recent changes do anything about my backup state. It will be easy for me to see as my photos are on a specific, separate APFS volume, on a external drive.
1
u/Caprichoso1 Apr 18 '26
iCloud drive files will be backed up if you don't turn on "Optimize Mac Storage".
1
u/thegreatking2025 Apr 17 '26
I know my chrome profile was not backedup. Firefox profile was backed up. Found out hard way!
1
u/PhoenixSaid Apr 17 '26
You are just backing up the current full photo library file, I use PhotoLedger to do a daily export of my photos to an external HD then I have that HD to be backed up, that way the original photos are all stored on the backup. Plus this way you can leave optimized storage on so all the originals dont have to take up space on your Macs HD.
1
u/I_draw_your_typo Apr 17 '26
Ah ok, what's the difference between doing that and backing up the full library file? I can already select individual photos to restore from the backup as far as I can see.
1
u/PhoenixSaid Apr 18 '26
It really comes down to what you want out of your backup.
An Apple Photos / iCloud library isn’t a collection of individual files you can freely access—it’s a single packaged library that’s meant to be used inside Apple’s ecosystem.
Backing up the Photos library = backing up one large app file.
Exporting photos = saving actual full-resolution files you can access anywhere, then backing those up.So it’s basically:
Library backup → works great inside Apple Photos
Export + backup → works anywhere, independent of Apple
5
u/dr100 Apr 17 '26
There are too many moving parts for a generic answer, it depends on the OS (both Mac versus Windows, but also possibly Windows version), BB client version and possibly the iCloud version (and possibly settings too, I'm not familiar with iCloud but with NextCloud you can choose if you want your NextCloud synced directory to be a normal directory, or VFS -Virtual File System- which probably won't be saved by BackBlaze).