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Import an Apple Photos export from your Mac

Export unmodified originals with XMP files from Photos on your Mac, then bring the folder into your library.

There’s no way for a website to read your Photos library directly, so you export it from Photos on your Mac first. Exported this way, every photo comes out exactly as your camera took it, with a small XMP file beside it that carries its details.

Before you export

  • Make sure the originals are on your Mac. If you use iCloud Photos with “Optimize Mac Storage”, Photos has to download each original as it exports, which can be slow. In Photos settings, under iCloud, you can choose to download originals to this Mac first.
  • Check your disk space. The export is a full copy of your library. You can export to an external drive.

Export from Photos

  1. Open Photos on your Mac.
  2. Select the photos to bring across. To take everything, open your library and choose Edit → Select All.
  3. Choose File → Export → Export Unmodified Originals. Use this one, not the plain export: it keeps the original files, including both halves of each Live Photo.
  4. In the export options, tick Export IPTC as XMP. This writes the XMP file next to each photo. Without it, only the details inside the photo files come across.
  5. Leave the file names as they are. Any subfolder option works.
  6. Click Export, then choose a new, empty folder and confirm.

Photos may take a while for a large library. Leave the Mac awake until it’s done.

Import the folder

  1. Open Imports from the sidebar.
  2. Under Move a whole library, choose Export from Apple Photos.
  3. Click Choose the exported folder and pick the folder you exported to, or drag the folder onto the box.
  4. Wait while Magpie reads dates, places and other details. Nothing is uploaded yet.
  5. Check the summary, then click Import … files (the button shows how many).

Keep the tab open while it runs. See Follow an import while it runs.

What comes across

From the photo files and their XMP files, Magpie keeps:

  • Dates. When the photo was taken. If the photo file has its own date with a time zone, that date is used; the XMP date fills in when it doesn’t.
  • Places, when the photo file itself has no location.
  • Titles and captions you added in Photos.
  • Keywords.
  • People’s names, when Photos included them in the XMP file.
  • Live Photos. The photo and its short video stay together as one item.

Your Apple albums aren’t part of this export, so they don’t come across. If albums matter to you, an iCloud Photos data copy includes them. You can run both: photos already in your library aren’t added twice.

What’s left out

  • Files that aren’t photos or videos. Photos sometimes writes small .AAE files that describe edits; these are ignored.
  • XMP files with no matching photo. The summary counts these.

If something goes wrong

  • “This doesn’t look like the export we expected.” The folder has no XMP files next to the photos. Check that you ticked Export IPTC as XMP, and export again if not. If you go ahead anyway, the photos still come in, with only the details stored inside each file.
  • Some photos have the wrong place. Photos on some older versions of macOS wrote locations into XMP files without saying north or south, east or west. When the photo file has its own location, that one is used instead and is correct.
  • Only some photos appear in the summary. Check that you exported everything you selected, and that you chose the top folder of the export.

For more, see If an import goes wrong.

Keep my folders

The Keep my folders switch is on by default. With it on, the folders inside your export become Folders in Magpie, and each photo goes in the folder it came from. See Folders.

  • The folder you pick is not made into a folder itself, only the folders inside it. Photos directly in it go in no folder.
  • Folders can go up to 10 levels deep. If a photo is in a deeper folder, it goes in the folder at level 10 and nothing is left out. When this happens, the finished import tells you how many files were placed that way, with a few examples.
  • If you switch it off, the photos still come in, but no folders are made.
  • You need a role that can organize photos in the library. Without it, the photos are imported without folders and you are told so.
  • The folders come from how you laid out the export (the subfolder option you chose in step 5), not from your albums in Photos.
  • A folder named for a year, such as 2019, can give a photo with no date of its own an approximate date. See Import photos from Google Drive for how that works.

Imported this export before? Import the same files again to build the folders. No photo is added twice. A photo you took out of a folder, or a folder you deleted, comes back when you import the same files again.