@marshray iCloud photo library is a specific copy of photos under its own management. It looks like the backing folder’s path is displayed behind that popup. You can verify that your local photos also exist somewhere outside this folder first.

In the worst case, you can download them back from the cloud through the web interface (this may be extremely tedious, idk if there’s a bulk option) and then nuke the cloud copies. And note, there IS a cloud copy of anything it already added to its library.

@0xabad1dea Thanks. I believe you but it doesn’t say “iCloud photo library” it says “PC photo library”, which is not a concept I’m familiar with. My PC does not have a camera and doesn’t take photos. There is a “Pictures” shell folder, but I don’t think it’s a “Library”, which is yet another concept.

I’m just used to using dark patterns and ambiguous wording like this to try to trick me into agreeing to them taking control of my files.