Why Is Photo Library So Large On Mac

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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.

Why Is Photo Library So Large On Mac Computer

Before you start, be sure to back up your library.

Mac

Prepare your drive

Why Is Photo Library So Large On Mac

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.

Why

Move your Photos library to an external storage device

  1. Quit Photos.
  2. In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
  3. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
  4. 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

  5. After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
  6. If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.

Today I saw that 2 different positions in 'manage storage' menu differ in size: Photos and Photo Library. I would like to know what is stored in which, but it is my first Mac and I cannot (or do no. Jan 30, 2017  Interesting, so it may be backing up my photos, despite the fact that they should be considered purgeable data because they're in iCloud Photo Library and I have optimized storage on? Talk about wasteful. I already have those photos backed up on my Mac, in Time Machine, on my own personal offsite backup system AND in iCloud. Mar 20, 2009  The Aperture library for my image collection is absolutely massive compared to Lightroom 2. I have 122000 images in my LR collection & the catalog is 1.2 GB in size. Referencing just a fraction of this in Aperture had a catalog pushing 30 GB before I blew it off my Hard drive & decided to avoid referencing so many images with Aperture. Apr 01, 2020 Designate a System Photo Library in Photos If you have multiple photo libraries on your Mac, you can choose one to be the System Photo Library. The System Photo Library is the only library that can be used with iCloud Photos, Shared Albums, and My Photo Stream. The new Photos library references the same master images as your old library, so you don't need the space to store images twice. What if my iPhoto library is 500GB and I only have 10GB free on my Mac? Thanks to some under-the-hood wizardry from Apple, your photos won't duplicate when you import your library from iPhoto/Aperture to Photos. Apr 22, 2015  A large library like mine, however, can still be a drag on the Photos app, slowing down performance to the point where a quick edit in theory becomes frustratingly laborious in practice.

Delete original library to save space

Why Is My Mac Photo Library So Large

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:

  1. Quit Photos.
  2. Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
  3. 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.

Why Is Photo Library So Large On Mac Download

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.