Photos Library Mac Size
Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows, and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive.
How to cope with a Photos library too big to fit on an internal Mac drive Apple doesn’t offer the perfect mix of choices with iCloud Photos, and the right answer isn’t obvious. Final word on photo management on Mac. There are basically two things you need to remember to bring order into your photographing life: Before you get to organization and management, be sure to unclutter your photo library. Jul 12, 2017 How to Move Your Apple Photos Library to Another Location Matt Klein @howtogeek Updated July 12, 2017, 11:14am EDT Apple’s new Photos application was released as part of a. May 07, 2015 How-To: Safely shrink your Mac’s giant photo library, deleting duplicate images to save space Gauging The Size Of Your Mac’s Problem. If you’re not sure just how much space your photo collection. Exercise Extreme Caution. Be very careful (yes. Sep 28, 2018 The size of your Photos Library on your Mac will usually be slightly larger than the amount of space that you need to store your photos and videos in iCloud. See how much iCloud storage you're using Choose Apple menu System Preferences.
Before you start, be sure to back up your library.
Prepare your drive
Open Iphoto Library
You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled).1 Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.
To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.
Move your Photos library to an external storage device
- Quit Photos.
- In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
- In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
- Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. If you see an error, select your external drive's icon in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info. If the information under Sharing & Permissions isn't visible, click , then make sure the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' checkbox is selected. If it's not selected, click to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the checkbox.2
- After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
- If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.
Delete original library to save space
After you open your library from its new location and make sure that it works as expected, you can delete the library from its original location.
In a Finder window, go back to your Pictures folder (or whichever folder you copied your library from) and move Photos Library to the trash. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash to delete the library and reclaim disk space.
Open another Photos library
If you have multiple libraries, here's how to open a different one:
- Quit Photos.
- Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
- Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.
Photos uses this library until you open a different one.
Learn more
If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool.
1. You can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups.
Mac Photo Library Location
2. If the volume isn't formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or has been used for Time Machine backups but hasn't been erased, this checkbox will either not be present, or won't be selectable after unlocking. Erase and reformat the drive for this option to be available.
Copy the Photos Library to the external drive. You can drag and drop. Wait while it copies over - this may take a while depending on the size of your library and the speed of the connection to the. Mar 18, 2020 In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users username Pictures, and it's named Photos Library. Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. Mac move photos library to external drive.