Wait for Photos v2
Join the waitlist above. You'll get early-access beta + launch-day email.
Apple Photos backup
Back up the library you actually use.
Apple Photos is where your memories and your masters live — and it's where most backup tools choke. macup is building proper Photos support for v2: every original, every edit, every version. Join the waitlist.
Coming in v2 · Late 2026
Why Photos is hard
It's a bundle pretending to be a file.
The .photoslibrary "package" is actually a folder containing a Core Data database, thumbnails, edit XMPs, and, critically, a pointer system for "Optimized Mac Storage" — where what looks like a 40 MB RAW is really a 400 KB thumbnail linked to iCloud's full-res original. Naive backup tools copy the thumbnails and silently lose the real pixels. macup detects this and fetches the originals before snapshotting.
The macup approach
Detect. Quiesce. Download. Snapshot.
macup detects Photos libraries at setup time. When a snapshot is about to run, we pause during Photos' own indexing to avoid corruption. If 'Optimize Mac Storage' is on, we download the optimized-Mac originals first, snapshot them, then let macOS restore the optimized state. Restore preserves library integrity — you don't reimport anything, you just point Photos at the restored library.
Wait for v2 — or start backing up everything else now.
Start backing up everything else
macup backs up the rest of your Mac today — Lightroom catalogues, Final Cut projects, your Documents folder, Desktop, external drives. Join the trial and migrate Photos to macup when v2 ships.
Start a 14-day trial →About Photos support.
When will this ship?
We're targeting a v2 release in late 2026. Join the waitlist and we'll email you as soon as it enters beta — you'll get early access before the general ship.
Can I back up Photos today without this feature?
Yes, but with caveats. macup will back up the .photoslibrary package as files, which works for most cases but doesn't handle 'Optimize Mac Storage' originals (the thumbnails that point at full-resolution iCloud copies). The Apple Photos feature adds proper handling for those.
Does this work with iCloud Photos?
Yes. The feature detects Optimize-Mac-Storage mode, downloads full originals before snapshotting, and returns them to optimized state after. You get backups of the full-resolution images, not thumbnails.
What about Aperture, Capture One, Lightroom Classic?
Those are separate apps with their own library formats — they work with macup today via regular folder backup. This page is specifically about Apple's built-in Photos app.
Photos support is coming. Everything else is ready now.
Trial macup today. We'll enable Photos support in your account the moment v2 ships.