Moving your Apple Photos library or offloading large videos from Mac to a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device is a good space management or backup strategy. But what if you encounter issues like snail-paced transfers, file corruption, and permissions errors?

Here is a guide to common problems when writing from a Mac to a NAS and how to fix them, ensuring your photo backups are safe and fast.

Note: Apple warns against storing an Apple Photos library on a NAS, a removable storage device , or on a device shared over your network or the internet, including over a cloud-based storage service. But it’s OK to store photos in regular folders on a NAS. Just guard against the following issues:

Problem 1: Painfully Slow Transfer Speeds

It can be frustrating to watch your progress bar crawl when moving a 500GB Photos library. The likely causes and possible fixes are:

Wi-Fi Bottleneck: The primary culprit is often a wireless connection. For large data transfers, always connect both your Mac and your NAS to your router via Ethernet cables.

Obsolete Hardware: Ensure you are using at least Cat5e or Cat6 cables and a modern switch that supports Gigabit speeds (1GbE or 10GbE).

Network Protocols: Make sure your Mac is using the modern SMB (Server Message Block) protocol, which Apple favors, rather than the older, slower AFP (Apple Filing Protocol).

Problem 2: Permissions and Connection Errors

If your Mac refuses to write files to the NAS or repeatedly asks for a password, it’s likely a permissions issue. You may encounter this issue when transferring photos with the Photos app’s native export function or with a specialized app like Photos Takeout. The causes and fixes are as follows:

Insufficient Access: Double-check your NAS settings to ensure the user account you are logged in with has explicit “Read/Write” privileges for that specific shared folder.

Keychain Conflicts: Old, incorrect credentials saved in your Mac’s Keychain Access can block new connections. Search for your NAS name in the Keychain app and delete the old password entries, forcing macOS to ask for the correct login next time.

Explicit Permissions: Ensure that the app in question has the necessary permissions to write to the NAS. Create a dedicated folder on the NAS, navigate to it via the app’s Transfer or Export button, and select it as the export destination. macOS treats this sequence of clicks as your granting permission.

Problem 3: File Corruption and Unreadable Photos

This is the most severe issue: transferred files that won’t open later. Here’s what can cause this, and how to prevent it:

Protocol Mismatches: Stick exclusively to SMBv3 on both ends. Mixing AFP and SMB protocols can lead to data integrity problems.

System Updates: Ensure both your macOS and NAS firmware are up to date. Software bugs that cause corruption are often patched quickly by vendors like Synology or QNAP.

By addressing network hardware, standardizing your protocols, and managing credentials, you can ensure a smooth, reliable experience transferring files from your Mac to your NAS.

The post Mac to NAS File Transfers: How to Avoid Corruption and Slow Speeds appeared first on Photos Takeout.

When exporting photos and videos from the Apple Photos library, try to use an external drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled). As far as possible, avoid using FAT32 or ExFAT format.

It’s not that you can’t use FAT formats, but you must know the inherent limitations of these file systems. It’s also not easy to check in advance that your Photos Library won’t run afoul of these. FAT-based file systems work for simple file transfers, but can cause problems when dealing with large Photos Libraries.

Understand the Limitations

1. File Size Limits: FAT16 and FAT32 have strict maximum file sizes: 2 GB per file for FAT16 and 4GB per file for FAT32. Video files are often larger. Apple Photos offers no way to check how many and which of your files exceed these sizes. ExFAT removes this limit, but still has other issues.

• Filename and Character Restrictions: FAT-based systems disallow the use of special characters like: / : * ? ” < > \ | in file names. If a photo or album name contains any of these characters, the export will fail. FAT16 is even more restrictive, using an old 8-character filename limit.

• No Journaling (Higher Risk of Corruption): FAT32 and ExFAT don’t support journaling. So a cable disconnect, incorrect disk eject, system sleep, or power loss during export can corrupt files or even the entire drive. APFS/HFS+ provide much stronger protection.

• Weak macOS Metadata Support: FAT-based file systems do not support macOS permissions, extended attributes, or resource forks. This can lead to missing metadata and incorrect timestamps.

• Reliability With Large Numbers of Files: Photos libraries typically have thousands of items. FAT and ExFAT slow down significantly with large directories. This increases the chance of write failures, corruption, and very long export times. APFS can handle many files quickly and safely.

In short, while FAT/FAT32/ExFAT offer broad compatibility, they are not ideal for large Photos library exports. Using APFS vs. ExFAT ensures faster, safer, and more reliable exports—and helps avoid the most common problems users encounter when saving their Photos Library to an external drive.

If You Have to Use a FAT-format Drive

In some situations, you can’t use APFS and have to use a ExFAT-format external drive. Example: when migrating to a Windows-based system or moving to Apple-independent storage. For such cases:

• If you can’t use APFS, use ExFAT – NOT FAT16 or FAT32,
• Rename any file and album names containing illegal characters,
• Check for large file sizes, and know that some metadata may be lost,
• Consider splitting very large libraries into 2 or 3 libraries,
• Be prepared for slower exports.

To check if any filenames in your Photos library contain illegal characters, create a smart album with the conditions ( Filename – Includes – / ) + ( Filename – Includes – : ) + …. Unfortunately, you can’t check album names this way; you’ll have to do that manually. To check your Photos library for file size, you can use the excellent macOS utility app PhotoSort.

What About Storing a Photos Library?

If you have a very large Photos library, you may want to move it from your Mac’s internal drive to an external hard disk drive (HDD) or SSD as explained here, but you must not store it on:

• NAS or a shared network drive: Apple expressly warns against this, as it can irreparably corrupt your Photos library.
• A FAT-based system, because of all the limitations listed above.

How to Export Apple Photos Library

The native Export functionality provided by Apple Photos is very limiting. A much easier and faster way to export an iCloud or Mac Photos library into regular folders is with the macOS app Photos Takeout. It is a fast, easy, and parametrized way to export even very large libraries into folders by Years or Albums, and to keep those backups incrementally updated over time.

The post APFS or EXFAT? The Right SSD / HDD Format for Your Apple Photos Library appeared first on Photos Takeout.

Does that pesky “iCloud Storage is Full” message pop up every time you use your Mac or iPhone? Don’t panic and upgrade to a more expensive iCloud plan. It’s easy to free up iCloud storage. First see what’s filling up your existing storage quota. Like this:

On iPhone or iPad: Go to Settings > iCloud > Storage

On Mac: Go to Settings > [Your Profile] > iCloud

You’ll see a bar chart showing the breakdown of your storage. This tells you what needs attention.

Chances are that the culprit is photos. We take a LOT of them, and at ever-increasing resolution. So it’s no surprise that photos and videos quickly soak up iCloud space, leaving little room for new photos or backups. Sure you can buy more iCloud storage, but it’s an ongoing expense. It gets more expensive once you’re above 200 GB, and there’s no end to it.

Too Many Photos?

How many of your photos and videos are memorable keepsakes: 60 or 70 per cent? The rest is clutter. Consider deleting or saving them on your computer or an external drive. Or in a Shared Album (It does not count towards your iCloud storage).

How to do this? Focus on largest photos and videos by file size, because those take up the most space. Also delete all the junk you’ve accumulated – random screenshots, tired memes, bad shots, forgettable photos – to clean up your library.

Apple Photos does not provide any way to separate large files from small, or good shots from bad. But there’s a smart, affordable solution: the PhotoSort app.

Get Them Sorted

PhotoSort is a neat little Mac app that can help reduce your iCloud storage costs by sorting your Photos library by file size and aesthetic quality. You can download it from the Mac App Store. Apple vets all apps on its App Store for safety and privacy – so no need to worry. PhotoSort runs locally on your Mac – so your photos and data are safe.

This app sorts your Mac and iCloud Photos library and creates two albums in Photos on Mac:

• SizeSort: Shows Photos and videos sorted by file size. If you use ‘Optimize Mac Storage’ i.e. full resolution photos are in iCloud and low resolution thumbnails on the Mac, the size of full resolution items is used for sorting. Use this album to find the BIG items that’ll free up max space in iCloud.
  
• QualitySort: Shows all photos and videos sorted by aesthetic quality. Use this AI-powered sorting to identify the best photos that you might want to Favorite, save in albums, or share. It also identifies low-quality items that you might want to delete.

The Beauty and Uniqueness of PhotoSort is that it creates the above sorting directly in the Photos app – so you can browse the photos and free up iCloud storage from within the Photos app itself. Both albums also sync via iCloud to your iOS devices, so you can view and manage space on those, too.

No complex menus or hidden steps — just point, click, delete, and instantly reclaim iCloud space without paying for a bigger plan.

And a pleasant surprise: The app costs just $4.99 for lifetime use.

Can’t Bear to Delete?

If your largest photos and videos are all important, first back them up. Remember that iCloud is NOT a backup. Do the backup on your Mac or an external drive. Ideally keep it independent of the Apple ecosystem, i.e. don’t just make a copy of the Photos library but export into regular folders.

You can do this with Photos Takeout – another Mac app. It exports photos and videos from the Photos app (including iCloud Photos) into organized folders to any destination you specify. You can choose to export by year, month, date, or album, making it easy to browse memories offline. After exporting, you can delete photos from iCloud to reclaim space and avoid buying more storage. The app is fast and safe – thousands of professional users trust it to get full control over their photo catalogs.

Don’t Pay for Storage You Don’t Need

Deleting the huge and the unneeded photos that you find with PhotoSort removes them from iCloud and all associated devices. Every gigabyte you clean up frees up storage everywhere – keeping your monthly Apple bill lower, and also not having to worry about your iPhone and Mac filling up.

Are you are ready to cut the clutter, save money, and free up iCloud storage? Get PhotoSort and get sorted.

PS: It’s always a good idea to offload and archive photos before deleting them permanently. Photos Takeout is the perfect tool for this.

The post iCloud Storage is Full of Photos? Here’s the Fix. appeared first on Photos Takeout.

Apple makes it sound easy: Go to iCloud.com and log in with your Apple ID.Once you’re logged in, you can select the photos or videos you want to download and choose the download option.

Apple conveniently omits to tell you that you can download a maximum of 1,000 photos and videos at a time. And that these download in a zip file. So you need to do 40 separate exports, manually tracking what’s transferred and what remains. Then you unzip and merge all 40 folders and end up with a rather large folder containing 40,000 photos. No organization, no albums…a complete mess.

Photos Takeout Does It Better

Photos Takeout, available on the Mac App Store, can download those 40,000 photos and videos from iCloud in one shot. With just a few clicks. In folders organized by years or albums. Preserving full resolution, metadata and image formats. Painlessly and fast.

What is Photos Takeout?

Photos Takeout is the essential macOS app for exporting your iCloud and Mac Photos library. Popular with hundreds of professional photographers and photo organizers, it gives you complete control of the photos and videos saved in your Apple Photos library. It provides an intuitive, easy way to effortlessly download and back up your Mac and iCloud Photos library into organized, accessible folders.

If you are frustrated by the limitations of Apple’s native Photos app exports, just remember that Photos is designed to keep photos IN, while Photos Takeout is designed to get them OUT.

How is it better than exporting with Apple Photos?

• Customizable Exports: Export all or selected photos and videos by year, album, or date, creating a familiar and intuitive folder structure.
• Preserve Quality & Metadata: Maintain original image resolution, vital EXIF/IPTC metadata, titles, descriptions, keywords, and locations.
• Full iCloud Access: Fetches full-resolution versions from iCloud when “Optimize Mac Storage” is enabled. No “1000 photos at a time” limitation.
• Incremental Exports: Keep your exported folders up-to-date by exporting only new or modified files, saving time and storage.
• Comprehensive Format Support: Handles all photo & video formats, including Live Photos (exported as JPG + MOV).
• Maintain Organization: Preserve your custom arrangements within albums and mirror complex folder-album hierarchies.
• Broad Compatibility: Compatible with all macOS and Apple Photos versions from High Sierra to Sequoia. Runs seamlessly on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

Why Can Apple Photos Be So Good?

Unlike the rudimentary export function of the native Photos app, which lumps all your files into a single, jumbled up folder and can discard crucial metadata, Photos Takeout ensures your memories are exported perfectly.

• True Offline Backup: iCloud is a syncing service, not a backup. Photos Takeout create a real, accessible offline backup of your entire library in an organized format.
• Reduce iCloud Storage Costs: Easily offload photos and videos from iCloud while retaining a fully accessible copy on your Mac or external drive.
• Seamless Migration: Extract your image assets for migration to other photo management programs without losing organization, edits, or metadata.
• Effortless Management: Find your exported library in neat, well-structured folders for easy browsing and management.

Photos Takeout simplifies complex tasks, empowering you to manage even multi-terabyte libraries with just a few clicks. Download the free version today to experience the fastest, most reliable way to secure and organize your digital memories.

Where to Find Out More?

Visit our website for a detailed user guide and personalized support: www.photostakeout.com.

Download the free evaluation version on the Mac App Store.

PS: If you are downloading photos to reduce iCloud storage, PhotoSort is a nifty little app that sorts the Photos library by file size and aesthetic quality. These are two more things that the Photos app doesn’t do. Sorting thus can help identify the biggest space hogs in your library, and also poor quality pictures, random screenshots, pictures and memes saved from the internet etc. that you may want to delete.

The post How to download iCloud photos: No 1000 photos limit) appeared first on Photos Takeout.

In Photos on Mac, you can use smart albums to find such photos – by creating a smart album with the condition ‘Album – Is Not – Any’. However, iOS doesn’t support smart albums. So we have to find some other way to do it.

Good news: This ability is available in iOS 18.4 and later.

Here’s how to find photos that are not in any album:

1. Open Photos on your iPhone or iPad.
   
2. Make sure you are in the Library view, which shows all your photos.
   
3. Swipe the screen slightly up or down. A little menu appears at the bottom.
   
4. Tap the round button on the left – it’s the one with up and down arrows.
   
5. Select Filter, and then ‘Not in any Album’. Done!

The little menu shown above appears at the bottom of the screen. Tap it and select Filter:

Select Not in an Album.

Next: How to sort the Mac / iCloud Photos library by file size?

Easy. With the macOS app PhotoSort.

Find a more detailed description here.

The post Find Photos That Aren’t In Any Album on iPhone/iPad appeared first on Photos Takeout.

Select the correct Photos library

Ensure that the Source Library for Photos Takeout is the same as Mac Photos’ current System Library. No worries if you only have one Photos library, but if you have multiple libraries, go to Photos > Settings > General, and set the library that you want to export as the system library.

If you specify a library other than the system library as the Source, Photos Takeout will ignore items stored in iCloud, referenced files, and any items containing edits.

Check the destination drive’s format

If exporting to an EHD or SSD, check its format. It should preferably be APFS or Extended Journaled. FAT32 or ExFAT will also work, but speeds may be slower and some limitations may apply. If the target drive is wrongly formatted, Photos Takeout may also create empty folders.

You may export to a NAS or networked drive, as long as it is set up to work correctly with macOS.

Check free space on the destination drive

The destination drive must have at least 20% more free space than the total size of the items you plan to export, otherwise the export will be incomplete or may hang.

Using iCloud? Check free space on your Mac

If Photos Preferences is set to Optimize Mac Storage, full resolution versions of your photos reside in iCloud and low resolution versions in Photos on Mac. For Catalina and later, Photos Takeout can directly download and export the full resolution photos for iCloud. The app first downloads the photos to your Mac then exports them. As such, the Mac must have enough free space to save them. If out of space, move your Photos library to an EHD, set the library on the EHD as the system library, and then export.

Check your album and file names

Ensure that file names don’t have invalid characters: Characters such as ~ ” # % & * : < > ? / \ { | } etc. can cause problems. This is especially important if your destination drive uses the FAT filesystem.

Permission to access Photos and external drive

Since macOS Big Sur, Apple has been progressively tightening controls on third-party apps (such as Photos Takeout) accessing data outside their sandbox. Files can fail to export if permissions are lacking. This often happens if the library is on another drive. We have seen that re-exporting (after deleting or renaming the previous export) often solves the problem.

Other things to remember

• Use the latest version of macOS your Mac supports, but not beta releases. For Mojave and older, Photos Takeout can’t directly export items from iCloud. They must first be downloaded to the local Photos library, then exported. For Catalina and later versions of macOS, Photos Takeout can directly export items stored in iCloud, and you don’t need to worry about this condition.

• Do you have referenced photos? Are they accessible? Referenced items are photos or videos that aren’t actually in your Photos library. They are stored elsewhere – e.g. in a folder on Mac, in Dropbox or Google Drive, or an external drive – and while adding them to Photos, you have unchecked the ‘Importing: Copy items to the Photos library’ box in Photos Preferences.
  
  Photos Takeout exports referenced files only for macOS Catalina and later. Even for Catalina and later, you need to ensure that such photos still exist at their original location – otherwise Photos Takeout will not be able to find and export them.
  
  To find referenced photos, create a smart album with the condition “Photos” – “is” – “Referenced”. If you want any items in this smart album, click them open in Photos. If they exist at the correct location, they’ll open. If they have been moved, you’ll get an error message.
  
• In case you get incomplete exports even after exporting in accordance with these guidelines, look for a text file listing missed items in your destination folder. If many items have failed, try to spot a pattern, and let us know. For only a few failed exports, you may export them manually from Photos.

As you can see, many factors can cause incomplete exports. This write-up only covers the main causes. If you come across any other use cases where all or some files fail to export, please let have:

• Your macOS and Photos Takeout versions,
• Location of your source library and export destination,
• Whether you have fully followed the above guidelines,
• A screenshot (so that we can see your export option selections and other details),
• Any other clues you can provide.

The post Photos Takeout for Mac – Troubleshooting Exports appeared first on Photos Takeout.

What You Can Do with Photos

Selecting multiple albums and clicking File > Export puts them all into one folder. You can drag and drop albums from the sidebar to your Mac, but doing this does not retain image resolution or metadata.

How to Export All the Albums

The Photos Takeout app for macOS provides a simple and efficient way to export all or selected albums into separate folders, either on your Mac or an external drive (It can also export folders by year).

Step 1: Download and Install the app

Download Photos Takeout from the Mac App Store. The free evaluation version allows you to export one photo per folder. To unlock the full functionality, you’ll need to make an in-app purchase ($6.99 for one month or $49.99 for a lifetime license).

Step 2: Launch Photos Takeout

Open the app. In the Export Options panel, select the Source Library (your system photo library). Click on the Albums tab to display all albums, including Shared Albums. If you have a lot of them, switch to List View for quicker selection.

Step 3: Choose a Destination Folder

Specify the destination where you’d like to save the exported folders. Also adjust other settings as needed. For example, if you’ve arranged the photos in a specific order, you can choose to preserve this custom sorting.

Step 4: Select the Albums to Export

Choose the albums you want to save as folders, then click Export to begin the process.

Each exported folder will be named after the corresponding album. The app preserves image resolution, format, and metadata. If you’ve created a folder structure (e.g., Folder > Sub-folder > Album), that structure will be maintained during export.

Additional Features of Photos Takeout

• Incremental Exports: After your initial export, what if you edit the photos or add new photos in an album? Just run an incremental export. This will update the previously exported folder with only the new or modified items, making the process much faster.
• Export Shared Albums and Favorites: Photos Takeout also allows you to export shared albums, favorites, and other auto-generated albums.

With Photos Takeout, exporting your albums from Photos on Mac becomes a quick and seamless process, while preserving your organization, resolution, and metadata.

Checklist of Key Features

• Specialized tool​ for exporting Apple Photos into folders on Mac or external hard drive​
• Can download and backup the entire Mac Photos library (or selected image assets)​
• Exports directly from iCloud, no need to first download photos to local Mac library
• Bypasses iCloud’s dreaded “Maximum 1000 photos at a time” download limitation
• Organizes photos into folders by year, year / months, dates, or albums
• Preserves all image metadata and image formats during export
• Unique “Incremental export” feature to keep backup in sync with your library
• Fast, reliable, easy to use, and inexpensive
• Compatible with all versions of MacOS Photos from High Sierra onward
• A powerful alternative to Mac Photos’ export function​

Photos Takeout is the Answer to all These Questions

• Can I download all photos from iCloud into folders on external drive?
• How to extract albums from iCloud Photos as folders on external SSD?
• Any easy way to back up a large iCloud Photos library to SSD or HDD?
• How to move iCloud Photo and Apple Photos libraries to an external hard drive?
• How to transfer my photos from iCloud to an EHD?
• Best way to backup iCloud Photos to external hard drive
• Hate iCloud’s maximum 1000 photos at a time download limit?
• Easy method to make an offline backup of iCloud Photos
• Managing and transferring photos and videos from Mac Photos to folders
• How to get photos out of Apple Photos in an organized form

The post How to Export Albums from Mac or iCloud Photos appeared first on Photos Takeout.

A Shared Album is different from a Shared Library. This article focuses on the former. You can read about the Shared Library feature here.

Creating Shared Albums

Creating these is easy. For step-by-step guidance, read this this tutorial from Apple.

A Few Things to Know

Apple hosts your Shared Albums. As such, photos and videos in these do not count against your iCloud storage. Since these don’t use your iCloud space, they aren’t visible in your iCloud.com/Photos account. You can only see them in the Photos app on Mac, PC or iOS devices.

By default, photos that others add to your albums occupy minimal space on your device: Photos app creates their small and thumbnail-sized versions for local storage. Only if you download others’ photos to your local library, they’ll occupy space equal to their file size.

Users need to connect to the internet when first syncing such albums to their devices. After generation of the smaller versions, users can see them without being online.

The following limitations apply to Shared Albums (Not bad for a free feature?):

• Maximum number of photos and videos per album: 5000
• Maximum number of photos per contributor, per hour: 1000
• Maximum number of photos per contributor, per day: 10,000
• Maximum albums you can own: 200
• Maximum albums you can subscribe to: 200
• Maximum subscribers per shared album: 100

Shared Albums Aren’t A Backup

Shared Albums store photos at lower resolution: Photos larger than 2048 pixels along the longer edge reduce to 2048 pixels (except panoramic shots, which can be up to 5,400 pixels wide) and videos to 720p. More on these and file formats supported here.

Apple strips captions, titles and keywords from the copies saved in Shared Albums. Creation dates and locations, are, however, retained.

Because of the above reasons, you should not think of iCloud Shared Albums as a backup.

After adding photos to a Shared Album if you delete them from your Photos app, they get deleted from your iCloud Photo Library and all linked devices. However, they still remain intact in the Shared Album.

If the creator / owner of a Shared Album deletes the album, all subscribers lose access to it. As such, for assured access to Shared Albums’ photos, you must download them to your Photos library or computer.

Downloading Shared Albums

If it’s a small album or you only need to download a few photos, this is easily done with the Photos app’s Export feature. Open the shared album, select photos, then click File > Export in the top menu.

With this method you can download up to 1,000 photos at a time. Since a shared album can have 5,000 photos and videos, you may have to do up to five separate exports per album.

If you need to export large shared albums or several albums at a time, it’s easier with Photos Takeout app: Click open Albums and scroll down. Select the shared albums you want, and click Export:

If you have a lot of albums, switch to the List View:

Check out our other blog posts on Apple Photos. For a deeper dive into the inner workings of the Mac Photos library, read this article.

The post Shared Albums in Photos on Mac – A Short Guide appeared first on Photos Takeout.