Does Deleting Mac Photos Library Delete Photos

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.

The bad news is that these fixes won’t work for every type of issue, and there’s no guarantee your pictures can be recovered. Mojave That’s why it it’s important to have multiple backups of your data, people!

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

Feb 10, 2017  So, what I wanted to find out is whether I can safely delete the old 'iPhoto Library'? The reason I'm asking is because my Mac is running low on disk space and by deleting the iPhoto library I can free up 64GB of space on my hard drive seeing as it's an unused duplicate? What happens when you delete an album in the Mac’s Photos app? Deleting an album might drop the photos and videos the albums contains into the trash? The original media remains in the.

Prepare your drive

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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

  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.

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:

  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.
Mac photos delete after import

Delete Photo Library From Mac

Photos uses this library until you open a different one.

Learn more

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If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool.

Does Deleting Mac Photos Library Delete Photos From Icloud

1. You can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups.

Mac Cosmetics Photos

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.