You're arguing with a lot of people who have personally seen this work. You can listen to other people. You can also go to an Apple Store and let them show you what's going wrong here.
Photos on MacOS indeed synchronise photos with iCloud.
After our conversation I had tried to understand why I indeed don't see any status and I found out, that to get one in Monterey iOS I must need to scroll down of the collection and after, at the bottom pul whole page for the second time. Status message appears and it was saying that syncing was disabled due to Mac performance (I didn't asked for this).
Apologies, for misleading, code543 and thank you for consistence.
However, I must admit that I'm happy that found iCloud Photos Downloader as a result, also I liked that it's downloading all photos in date/folder structure.
That's literally what that option is for.
If it's not working for you, you might be dealing with a bug, or perhaps you haven't given it enough time to sync. If you go to Photos > Library and scroll down, it should show you the sync status.
Long story short, iCloud wasn't syncing photos "due to performance" and this message was hidden.
Thanks once again!
Happy to hear it helped. :)
In settings, "download originals to this mac", select all photos, file -> "export unmodified originals" will trigger the Photos app to download every file from iCloud into your local library (as well as exporting them to wherever you want)
I guess "there is no download button" but dude...I don't need iCloud Photos Downloader.
Unfortunately, I'm unable to locate any button, status bar, or option to refresh or pull everything from iCloud in macOS Photos. There aren't even any details showing what percentage of iCloud is currently synchronized with macOS Photos. With nothing to debug, I can only conclude that for some reason the sync isn't working in my case.
It's great if this works for you and you don't need iCloud Photos Downloader, but for some reason I don't have that luxury.