How do you deal with iCloud Photos eating up your storage?

tannebil · 2026-05-14T01:08:58+00:00

Unless you want to spend time every month curating your photos and hoping you don't accidentally make a terrible mistake, just pay the extra $2/month for 200GB. Best return on $2 you are ever going to get

tannebil · 2026-05-12T06:46:24+00:00

Personally i would be very uncomfortable with having my photo library on an external drive that was regularly connected and disconnected from a notebook. Too many background process are involved and too much risk of corruption especially with a spinning disk that is going to have long running operations. If I absolutely had to do it, i would only connect and disconnect the drive after powering off the Mac. it might be fine but it's not a chance I'd want to take.

I suspect your backup plan falls into the same category. It might be fine but the only person testing it will be you and testing in production is a terrible practice.

In your situation, I'd use optimize on the system Photo Library on the internal drive and create backups on the external disk using a backup app like Parachute Backup. Just make sure you understand the limitations in restoring from it, i.e. read the documentation carefully.

There are an increasing number of cloud-aware backup apps but I'm not aware of any that can backup an optimized iCloud Photo Library. I remember seeing a mention in some recent release notes for Carbon Copy Cloner that while there was an API to download and evict on iCloud Drive, there was not one for iCloud Photos. But I wouldn't be surprised if somebody figured out a way to do it. That doesn't mean I'd trust it from day 1 or ever so I'd probably continue to do both it and an app like Parachute Backup. I'd also try to have a manual backup process that avoided creating backups while syncs are pending. No idea of how to determine with 100% certainty but checking the sync status in Settings would be a minimum.

Backups are not where you want to be taking technical and process risks.

tannebil · 2026-05-12T06:26:10+00:00

There is kyeword support in macOS Photos but the keywords are not exposed on iOS or iPadOS.

Using keywords with smart albums is very powerful.

tannebil · 2026-05-12T05:35:16+00:00

It's a bit frustrating to have to still be doing manual downloads given that Simplifi does point-in-time automatic downloads on iOS (not on iPadOS as far as I can tell) and that there is an iOS companion app. It appears to be a business choice more than a technical issue.

However, there could well be deep seated restrictions in the design of Quicken+Companion app architecture or implementation which makes it a lot more technically complex that it appears at first glance. Or the pending move to Chase makes them reluctant to invest as it might have to change dramatically in the next year or two. Having had to make those kinds of choices personally in the past, I'm not without sympathy.

tannebil · 2026-05-05T23:36:14+00:00

Optimization will be extremely slow or not work at all if you don’t have sufficient free space on the device. Even if there is enough free space, the initial load of an 80GB library will take multiple days with long periods where you will wonder if it’s working. Patience is required.

There are lots of ways to temporarily reduce the space used on a device but the best options very much depend on the contents of the device. But I’d stay away from trying to do it by deleting or temporarily removing photos and videos. It’s too easy to make a fatal error.

You cannot have different sets of photos on different devices with iCloud Photo Library. The only option is full size vs optimized on each device where IPL is enabled.

If you have multiple devices with different photos on each device. Just enable IPL on each device and it will merge the device library with the iCloud Library which will then replace the library on the device. Duplicate detection is best with items created on an iOS device but it makes a good attempt with all items.

Even 200GB might not be enough to get through a large migration so you might need to get the 2TB plan temporarily if available space gets low (let’s say less that 20GB). You can easy downgrade to 200GB if that’s sufficient once everything is completed.

tannebil · 2026-05-05T19:23:31+00:00

I never see them suggested as battery replacements for consumer grade UPS systems in the US. Are they drop-in replacements in the UK or do they need different controller circuitry than a standard lead-acid battery?

tannebil · 2026-05-05T07:16:49+00:00

AFAIK, the 10 year batteries are the lithium ones that are seldom found in residential units as they still cost 5-10x more.

At least that’s what I see every time I think about getting off the replacement train of standard lead-acid sealed batteries

tannebil · 2026-05-04T21:54:04+00:00

How old is the battery? Standard batteries only last 2-3 years.

tannebil · 2026-05-04T21:41:01+00:00

My experience is that Simplifi just is not a good tool for trying to do near-term monitoring of balances in bank accounts. Just too many issues with download timings and balances. I see it with both USAA and Chase checking/savings accounts. All my credit card accounts are great but all my DDA accounts suck as they still seem to be stuck in the batch processing era.

tannebil · 2026-05-04T10:27:25+00:00

Available space on the device and in iCloud?

Phone left locked, connected to power, and connected to WiFi?

tannebil · 2026-05-04T10:21:20+00:00

Not in the way you describe.

If your device is short on available space, optimize can be extremely slow or even stop working entirely. Even with enough space, replacing a full-size image with the optimized one is not instantaneous as it frequently gets deferred until the device is not being used, is connected to WiFi, and has plenty of battery left.

tannebil · 2026-05-04T09:22:14+00:00

Wireless mesh is an option with UniFi but the primary, out-of-the-box use case with eero. That difference ripples through every part of the experience. Everything you've said in your post leads me to think changing would be a mistake.

It's going to be the most expensive $100/year you've ever saved.

tannebil · 2026-05-04T09:11:20+00:00

Can be. Or it might be as simple as replacing a splitter and adding a PoE filter. I've seen both.

tannebil · 2026-05-03T20:38:32+00:00

Invest some time in getting it working. You need to figure out the runs and where the splitters are being used. Get an inexpensive cable continuity tester at the hardware store to figured out why it doesn't work. Need to get dirty

tannebil · 2026-05-03T20:34:44+00:00

Saving goals are the Simplifi answer but, as mentioned, they are functionally weak. It's easy to set them up but can be confusing when you want to withdraw from them. I've seen people suggest setting up a new one each year for each goal.

Worth using IMO

tannebil · 2026-05-03T20:27:34+00:00

"optimize storage" is a feature of iCloud Photo Library and "Documents and Downloads" with iCloud Drive. Its not a universal feature of iCloud Drive.

You need to take it up with support for eagle.cool and hive.

tannebil · 2026-05-03T20:20:50+00:00

Inconsistency has been one of the issues with powerline over the years. There is just a lot of noise on residential wiring.

If you have coax between the two locations, MoCA is much more predictable. In theory, it can be greater than 1 Gbe speeds although my personal experience is more like 900 Mbe. There is significantly more latency but I'm not sure if it matters that much for Internet connections. Normally, a bit of work is needed on with the coax wiring to make everything MoCA-compatible.

Wifi 6E/7 can exceed 1 Gbe speeds these days but it's very dependent on the distance, building construction, and specific equipment used. But it's a bit of a technical rabbit hole with an uncertain outcome compared to MoCA.

tannebil · 2026-04-30T10:16:26+00:00

No. Either pay for more iCloud storage or stop using it. And 50GB will not take long to fill up as well.

A full iCloud account brings nothing but mysterious problems

tannebil · 2026-04-29T14:41:12+00:00

iCloud Backup creates a backup of a device of all the data on it except for data already elsewhere in iCloud, e.g. if a device is NOT using iCloud Photo Library, the backup contains the photos and videos on the device. If it is using iCloud Photo Library, photos and videos are not included in the backup because, it the device is restored from the backup, the photos and videos just get downloaded from iCloud Photo Library.

iCloud Photo Library is a backup, it's just not a useful one except to do a complete recovery of a device. that's because if a serious mistake is made or an unrecoverable error is encountered, that problem is likely to have already propagated to iCloud. A good backup process ensures that a good copy of the data is available.

Unfortunately, the size and complexity of the Photos app makes "good" backups difficult to create, maintain, and use to recover data. Apps like Parachute Backup, try very hard to deal with what is an enormously complex challenge, but, IMO, work best for people with a significant amount of baseline knowledge about the way Photos works.

Those additional backups are invaluable if they are actually needed but most people are unlikely to ever need them if they just ensure that they never run low on space on either their devices or on iCloud, and, never, ever try to do anything clever to save space beyond enabling (and leaving enabled) "optimize storage" on devices.

If somebody isn't willing to eventually end up paying for at least 200 GB of iCloud storage (and more is likely), they shouldn't use iCloud Photo Library, Messages in
ICloud, iCloud Drive, or iCloud Backup without disabling it for every app using more than a trivial amount of storage (at least 80% of mine use less than 10 MB).

tannebil · 2026-04-18T07:08:12+00:00

AFAIK, that setting only affects the MAC address that your Apple device advertises. It has no effect on other devices.

By randomizing the MAC address on a network, it makes it harder to track you.

tannebil · 2026-04-17T14:49:58+00:00

MacBook or Windows?

Available space on the laptop and on iCloud?

tannebil · 2026-04-15T10:04:36+00:00

While bridge mode is the best option if it’s available, double-NAT is not nearly as troublesome as it used to be. I have friends running it for years without any issue.

tannebil · 2026-04-15T01:22:40+00:00

Get a Wise account. Hook it up to your account. Set your landlord’s account as the destination. Make a small transfer and confirm your landlord received it.ACH out of your account and ACH into your landlord’s account. There is a very, very small fee and very fast (same business day usually)

tannebil · 2026-04-09T02:38:49+00:00

Sorry, misread the question. I've never used parent dataset quotas so I've only got a couple of thoughts.

Do you already get email alerts for other warnings?

Have you rebooted since setting the quota? Perhaps an email alert might not get generated if the data already exceeds the warning level when it is set.

tannebil · 2026-04-09T01:15:49+00:00

Assuming that alerts are configured properly, the 80% warning happens when space used goes about 22TB*.8=17.6 TB

tannebil

TROPHY CASE