How To Make More Room On Mac Photo Library

Nov 09, 2018  Use the Disk Utility on your Mac to erase any hard drive (When you erase any drive in mac everything will be deleted, so please save any important data). Find the Photos Library on your Mac, it will be in your Pictures folder. Click the Go menu on the top and then select Home option from the menu. Feb 17, 2018  To accomplish this, iCloud Photo Library works with Photos for Mac as well as with Photos for iOS and iCloud.com, as the glue that holds everything together. Shoot a video on your iPhone, take a picture with your iPad, import from your DSLR on your Mac, and all of it goes up to Apple's servers and is made available on all your other devices. Jan 29, 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. Jul 24, 2015  For all iPhoto libraries I migrated the migration created hard links between the the original files in the iPhoto Library and the new Photos library and thus saved space. The new library and the original Aperture library had roughly the same size, but the free storage on my Mac. Aug 24, 2015  If you’re using the new Photos app on your Mac instead of the older iPhoto app, you most likely have a duplicate photo library floating around on your hard drive. For a lot of people, that could mean gigs and gigs of wasted storage space, especially on shared Macs with multiple migrated libraries.

Free up your space by transferring your Photos library to another external hard drive. By freeing up space you will have valuable space for your work on your Mac. In addition to this, we will help you to back up your whole photo library to iCloud.

Why store photos on external drive

In today’s world, everyone loves to capture photos of every single moment and wants to save all those moments in his/her personal devices like Mac. But saving all your photos can fill-up your Mac storage quickly and you may face the shortage of space.

Advertisement

There are many options to store your photos data. One of them to store your photos on iCloud photo library but the drawback of saving your photos on iCloud is, if you delete the photo from your device it will be deleted from iCloud as well.

One question raised up here is that what we can do to store all our photos to some safe place if we are running out of space on Mac?

How To Make More Room On Mac Photo Library

Fortunately, you have visited the right place to find the solution to your problem. There is a safer and easy way to transfer your entire photo library from your Mac to your external drive. The best of this trick is whenever you need to see your photos on your Mac you just need to open photo library app on your Mac it will automatically take you to your saved photos in external hard drive until unless it is plugged in.

Snapshot of the guide

There is a quick snapshot of the guide so you can understand quickly how to move the library to external drive.

  • Prepare your external hard drive to move Photo Library. Make sure drive is formatted as MacOS Extended Journaled.
  • Go to the location of the Photo library and move it to external drive.
  • Set the external library as a System Photo Library (So whenever you open the Photos app it will open the photos library from the external hard drive.)
  • After completing trasfer to drive, make sure this external drive is connected to your Mac whenever you want to access photos.

Our article will help you to move your photos from Mac to external hard drive. Continue reading the steps are about to start.

Do not worry if you have already stored your photos on iCloud photo library. Our article will help you to get back your already saved photos in iCloud photos library and will help you to move them to external hard drive. Here is how to do it.

System Photo Library vs Other Library

When you run Photos app on your Mac first time this will ask you to create a new or use an old library. That default Photo library became the system library automatically. Only System Photo Library are allowed to access iCloud services.

You can create multiple other libraries and work with photos only in one library at a time. To work in another library you have to switch the library. You can also change and set one of the other libraries as a System library.

How to transfer the Photos library to a hard drive

First, make it sure the hard drive you are going to use for Photos library is faster and have enough space. It will save your time and stored your memories quickly. A good hard drive always keeps your stuff secure and there are fewer chances of losing your data.

Before going step by step to move your photo library to external hard, first make it sure that your external hard drive is already formatted for Mac OS Extended (journaled). If it is not formatted for Mac first erase all the data from it and format and choose the option of Mac OS Extended (journaled). Use the Disk Utility on your Mac to erase any hard drive (When you erase any drive in mac everything will be deleted, so please save any important data ).

  1. Find the Photos Library on your Mac, it will be in your Pictures folder. Click the Go menu on the top and then select Home option from the menu.
  2. Open the Pictures folder and there you will find the Photos library.
    TIP: In order to see how much storage your photos have taken, just Ctrl+Click on the photos library icon and click on Get Info. Now you can make sure that you have enough storage in your external hard drive.
  3. It’s time to copy your Photos Library to your external hard drive using drag and drop trick. Now sit back and wait until copies over. The time of transferring photos depends on the size of your Photo Library.
  4. When transferred completed, press and hold the Option/Alt key from keyboard and click the Photos app icon from Dock to open it. Keep holding the keyboard key until you see a window otherwise this will open the Photos app.
  5. You will see a new window to choose the library. On that window hit the button Other library. Navigate to the new location on your external hard drive and choose the Photo Library.
  6. If there is a message that shows “there are some items that need to be downloaded from iCloud Photo library” then you need to click on delete incomplete items and download all those incomplete items.

    Set a photo library as System Photo Library

    We have already moved the library to an external drive now its time to set it as System Photo Library. Doing that will allow it to use iCloud service.

  7. Open the Photo Library from the external drive.
  8. Click Photos men and then select the Preferences option.
  9. On the next window click General and then click Use as System Photo Library button (this will help you to get it to work with iCloud Photo Library)
    TIP: Remember this is the step you need to perform in future If you accidentally unlinked the external drive’s photo library from the Photos app.
  10. Go to System Preferences then iCloud then Photos then Options, and choose iCloud Photo Library to turn that back on. See if you have stored all the photos here.

Note: you will need to plug in your external hard drive in order to see your photos).

Delete Photo Library from Mac

Once you have confirmed that all the photos in the library moved to the external drive. You can delete the Photo Library from your Mac computer. Go to the Pictures folder and delete it to free up space from your mac.

How to back up your iCloud Photo Library

If you want to move all your photos which you have already backed up to your iCloud photo library to a storage device connected to your Mac. Follow our step by step guide above, but you need to download all the images from iCloud first.

If you have already transferred your Photos library onto the external storage device, now you need to follow these steps.

  1. Open Photos on your Mac.
  2. Click Photos then click on Preferences.
  3. Click on the iCloud tab.
  4. Choose Download originals to this Mac.

Now all your iCloud photos will be saved on the storage device. (If you are running short of space you would probably not want to do that)

No related posts.

FonePaw - Solution - Eraser - Delete Photos on Mac

Deleting photos from Mac is easy, but there are some confusions. For example, does deleting photos in Photos or iPhoto removes the photos from hard drive space on Mac? Is there a convenient way to delete photos to release disk space on Mac?

This post will explain everything you want to know about deleting photos on Mac and introduce a convenient way to clean up Mac hard drive to release sapce - FonePaw MacMaster, which can delete photos cache, duplicate photos, photos or videos of large size and more to free up Mac space.

How to Delete Photos from Photos/iPhoto on Mac

Apple discontinued iPhoto for Mac OS X since 2014. Most users have migrated from iPhoto to Photos app. After importing your photos into the Photos app, don't forget to delete the old iPhoto library to regain your storage space.

Deleting photos from Photos on Mac is similar to deleting them from iPhoto. Since there are more users using Photos app on macOS, here is how to delete photos from Photos on Mac.

Delete photo(s) on Mac

Step 1 Open Photos.

Step 2 Select the photo(s) you want to delete. To delete multiple photos, press Shift and select the photos.

Step 3 To delete the selected pictures/videos, press the Delete button on the keyboard or right click Select XX Photos.

Step 4 Click Delete to confirm the deletion.

Note: Select photos and press Command + Delete. This will enable macOS to directly delete the photos without asking for your confirmation.

Another point to note is that deleting photos or videos from Albums doesn't necessarily mean that the photos are deleted from Photos library or the Mac hard drive. When you select a image in a album and press Delete button, the photo is merely removed from the album but still remain in the Photos library. To delete a photo from both the album and the Photos library, use Command + Delete or the Delete option in the right-click menu.

Permanently delete photos on Mac

Photos for macOS has Recently Deleted library to save the deleted photos for 30 days before the photos are permanently deleted. This is thoughtful and allows you to undelete the deleted photos if you are regret. But if you need to regain the free disk space from the deleted photos right away, you don't want to wait 30 days. Here is how to permanently delete photos on Photos from Mac.

Step 1 On Photos, go to Recently Deleted.

Step 2 Tick the photos you want to delete for good.

Transfer photo library from mac to pc. Step 3 Click Delete XX Items.

Delete Photos library on Mac

When MacBook Air/Pro is having low disk space, some users choose to delete the Photos library to reclaim disk space. If the photos are important to you, make sure you have uploaded the photos to iCloud Photos Library or saved them in a external hard drive before cleaning up the entire library. To delete Photos library on Mac:

Step 1 Go to Finder.

Step 2 Open your system disk > Users > Pictures.

Step 3 Drag the Photos Library you want to delete to the Trash.

Step 4 Empty the Trash.

How To Make More Room On Mac Photo Library Download

Some users reported after deleting the Photos library, there is no significant change in the storage when checking About this Mac. If this happen to you, too, don't worry. It takes time for the macOS to delete the entire Photos library. Give it some time and check the storage later. You'll see the free space is regained.


How to Delete Photos from Mac Hard Drive

Deleting pictures from Photos only remove the pictures in the Masters folder of Photos Library. There are more pictures in the disk drive that are not imported into Photos. To delete photos from Mac, you can go through all the folders that have images and videos and delete those that you don't need. Or you can use FonePaw MacMaster, which can detect duplicate images and large photos/videos on Mac to free up your disk space. If you need more free space, MacMaster can also clean system junks such as cache, logs, mail attchments, app data, etc. to give you more free space.

Remove duplicate photos on Mac

Step 1 Run MacMaster.

Step 2 Select Similar Image Finder.

Step 3 Select a location to search for duplicate photos. To delete duplicate photos in the whole hard drive, select your system drive.

Step 4 Click Scan. After scanning, select all the duplicated photos you want to delete and click Clean.

Step 5 The photos will be deleted from the disk.

Delete photos/videos of large size

One of the most effective way to free up space on Mac is to delete photos or videos that are large in size. MacMaster can help you with that.

Step 1 Click Large & Old Files.

Step 2 Click Scan.

Step 3 All the large files on your Mac, including photos and videos will be found.

Step 4 Select those you don't need and click Clean to remove them.

Clean photo cache of Photos/iPhoto Library

How To Make More Room On Mac Photo Library Software

Photos or iPhoto library create caches over time. You can delete the photo cache with MacMaster.

Step 1 Open MacMaster.

Step 2 Click Photo Cache > Scan.

Step 3 Select all items and click Clean.

That's how to delete photos on Mac. If you have any question, let us know in the comments.

How To Make More Room On Mac Photo Library App

Rating: 4.2 / 5 (Based on 59 ratings)Thanks for your rating.
Securely clean up the junk files, big files, unneeded files on your Mac to speed it up.

How To Make More Room On Mac Photo Library Free

Hot Articles
My Mac Running Slow, Here is Why and How
How to Clean My Mac Hard Drive
How Do I Delete Google Chrome from My Mac
[Solved] Cannot Empty the Trash on Mac
Startup Disk Full on MacBook Pro/Air, How to Clean Startup Disk
Uninstall Office (2011/2016) for Mac Completely
Mac System Storage Is Huge, How to Clear System Storage on Mac
How to Erase MacBook, MacBook Pro/Air, iMac
How to Delete Movies from Mac to Free Up Space