Most of the time you can just use a single iCloud photo library stored in your Pictures folder. But if you have other needs you can move it to an external drive, create more libraries, and even link photos to your library without importing them.
Want to know more about how to use Photos on your Mac? Check out this MacMost course!
Comments: 26 Responses to “Mac Photos App Storage Options”
Neil
1 year ago
Moving a Photos library works well if you aren’t using referenced files. Photos seems to record hard-coded referenced file paths in its library and when you move the referenced files you need to “find” the files for each separate directory. The recovery mechanism doesn’t seem as obvious, easy or powerful as the one in Aperture. In Photos this takes a long time if you’ve got a large referenced library.
Sherry
1 year ago
I am trying to figure out how to delete certain photos on my iPhone without deleting them on my laptop.
Do I turn off iCloud and if I turn it back on will the photos re-appear?
Sherry: If you are using iCloud Photos, don't think of it as "on my iPhone" or "on my laptop." There is only ONE location, and that is "in iCloud Photos." You can SEE that location on both devices, and both will cache recent photos locally for quick access. So what is your goal here? Is it to simply reduce the amount of space used on the device? If so, turn on the Optimize option for iCloud Photos.
Mark
1 year ago
Gary, thanks again for decoding best kept secrets of Apple, like multiple libraries! "Use as System Library" means "Use as iCloud Library"! Most developers would have just simply done File>Open Library ⌘O to load a new library instead of option-launch. I was surprised by the speed flipping through photos, much faster than preview in Finder, but isn't that because Photo.library duplicates all photos into thumbnails locally regardless of where the master is kept (Referenced or Network/Cloud)?
Justine
1 year ago
Hi Gary,
I have ensemble photos (work) and gardening photos (personal) in my photos library and as a consequence the library is huge! I’ve been collecting both for over two decades. The example you used on a wedding seems very specific and time-based. In my examples, they are active collections of photos. Would you recommend breaking it into two libraries or not. I use mobile devices. Thanks.
Justine: Yes, if it were me I would occasionally export the work photos and store them as files or in another library. Or, I would find a good camera app that keeps its own library and use that for work and the regular Camera app for personal.
Mark: Yes, Photos is doing a lot behind the scenes to insure smoothness.
Terry Spicknell
1 year ago
Part of the reason I’m asking this is photo stream is going away. I do not use iCloud photos. Most of my photos are on my 27” Mac. Is there a way to sync photos So that the same photos are on my on iPhone, iPad, 27” Mac and Mac mini, but not by using icloud.
Terry: iCloud is what does that. So why not use iCloud? You can use manual sync like before iCloud, but that just means syncing from new pictures from iPhone to Mac all the time, and then syncing back to iPhone and iPad all the time, over and over. iCloud does it without any action on your part, automatically and all the time. So, why don't you want to use it?
Bruce Holland
1 year ago
Hi Gary. Thanks for the photos tutorial. A couple of years ago when I had by old macbook pro I was running out of memory so I transfered my photos to an external drive. I now have a new Macbook and plenty of memory and would like all my photos in one place on my new mac. How can I add the old photos off the external drive to my current photos on the mac?
Bruce: It all depends. Are the old photos files, or in a Photos library? If they are files, just drag and drop them in. If they are in a separate library it gets tricky. You could switch to that library and then make it your system library, let it merge to iCloud, then switch back to your current library. Or you could just switch to it and export all the photos and import them into your current library. Lots of choices.
Celeste Parker
1 year ago
When taking photos with my iPhone, the files are so large that I can't upload them to many sites or to some email accounts. How can I reduce the digital size of each photo that I take. Also, my iPhone, iPadPro, MacBook Pro photos do not sync, why? I do have an iCloud account but you'd think I could access all my photos on each device. Thank you in advance.
Celeste: The photos are pretty standard size. Not sure why a site is having trouble with that in 2023. As for Mail, if you do try to send a large photo, then you are prompted with an option to compress it. But if you aren't seeing that, then the image isn't considered that big. As for syncing issues, you may not have iCloud Photos turned on across all of your devices.
Justine Murdy
1 year ago
Gary, following up on your answer above, "I would occasionally export the work photos and store them as files or in another library", how would I do that? Wondering if you can offer a way of organizing thru examples. Thank you so much!
Justine: Use the technique I show here to export "Unmodified Originals" from Photos. Then once you are sure you have these as files and don't need them in your Photos app anymore, delete them from there.
Joe Gervasio
1 year ago
I would like to maintain a Photos library, with albums etc, outside iCloud and not copying imported files, but still sync the selected albums from that library to my iPhone when syncing/backing-up the phone. I can't seem to get this to work, as the sync process only offers albums from the iCloud library. How can I do this? Thanks for all the very helpful info!
Joe: You'd need to turn off iCloud Photos on your iPhone to do that. You can have it both ways on your iPhone: iCloud and not iCloud.
william
4 months ago
Hey Garry, I have over 1.3 Tb of iCloud storage and this is an issue. However I frequently find myself looking through the photos search to find those old photos as references for my work such as notes, examples of stuff I'm working on, etc. Is it possible to offload full resolution photos/videos to an external drive but keep compressed (optimized) versions in iCloud to cut down on the space but keep the accessibility. then when I need the full resolution I just pull out the external drive.
William: That would be a lot of work to set up, and then a ton of ongoing work to deal with forever after. Are photos really the bulk of your 1.3 TB? Or is it videos? Or other files in iCloud Drive? Figure out what is really taking up the space. Offloading photos like you suggest sounds like a very bad solution to me.
Philippe DEWOST
3 months ago
How do you convert your Photo Library from "100% of photos are stored INSIDE the Photo Library" to "100% of photos are now referenced files in another location like an external drive" without losing anything from the previous tagging and keyword system ?
Philippe: You can't. So what is your goal here? Why do you want to change everything like this. BTW, it will also mean you won't be able to use iCloud Photos at all, since referenced files are not included.
Mel
2 months ago
I have not been using Photos or iCloud. I have stored pictures and videos in a folder on an external drive with subfolders for year and then further subfolders for date. There is about 6TB of data. I would like to now use Photos, but my MacBook Pro only has a 2TB drive. I have used Photos for converting some Live Photos to .mov files so there is a library on my Mac. What would be the best way to move the Photos library to the external HD (16TB) and then merge the photos and videos into Photos?
Mel: So you have 6TB of photos? Are they all photos, or are some videos too? I have 37,000 photos and that takes up 185MB of space. So that would make your library 1.2 million photos? Is that right?
I suppose you could set up a Photos library on your external drive, then move the photos into it. Then turn on iCloud Photos. You'll need an iCloud account big enough for 6TB and then some though.
Mel
2 months ago
My "files" library includes digitized home movies from VHS and 8mm sources which I captured in Quicktime using the "Maximum" setting so those files are very large. I also digitized negatives from our film camera days (pre-2001 in my case) and used a fairly high resolution so each of those files averages 170MB. Digitizing these analog sources also presents a problem (I suspect) if imported into Photos library, as the date of creation will not be "correct" presuming Photos will sort by date...
Mel: So many consider leaving those digitized videos from the past as files where they are, and moving only digital photos to your Photos library. That actually what I do.
Mel
2 months ago
Thanks for great advice. I appreciate your tutorials and have learned much from you. Keep up the good work!
Want to know more about how to use Photos on your Mac?
Moving a Photos library works well if you aren’t using referenced files. Photos seems to record hard-coded referenced file paths in its library and when you move the referenced files you need to “find” the files for each separate directory. The recovery mechanism doesn’t seem as obvious, easy or powerful as the one in Aperture. In Photos this takes a long time if you’ve got a large referenced library.
I am trying to figure out how to delete certain photos on my iPhone without deleting them on my laptop.
Do I turn off iCloud and if I turn it back on will the photos re-appear?
Sherry: If you are using iCloud Photos, don't think of it as "on my iPhone" or "on my laptop." There is only ONE location, and that is "in iCloud Photos." You can SEE that location on both devices, and both will cache recent photos locally for quick access. So what is your goal here? Is it to simply reduce the amount of space used on the device? If so, turn on the Optimize option for iCloud Photos.
Gary, thanks again for decoding best kept secrets of Apple, like multiple libraries! "Use as System Library" means "Use as iCloud Library"! Most developers would have just simply done File>Open Library ⌘O to load a new library instead of option-launch. I was surprised by the speed flipping through photos, much faster than preview in Finder, but isn't that because Photo.library duplicates all photos into thumbnails locally regardless of where the master is kept (Referenced or Network/Cloud)?
Hi Gary,
I have ensemble photos (work) and gardening photos (personal) in my photos library and as a consequence the library is huge! I’ve been collecting both for over two decades. The example you used on a wedding seems very specific and time-based. In my examples, they are active collections of photos. Would you recommend breaking it into two libraries or not. I use mobile devices. Thanks.
Justine: Yes, if it were me I would occasionally export the work photos and store them as files or in another library. Or, I would find a good camera app that keeps its own library and use that for work and the regular Camera app for personal.
Mark: Yes, Photos is doing a lot behind the scenes to insure smoothness.
Part of the reason I’m asking this is photo stream is going away. I do not use iCloud photos. Most of my photos are on my 27” Mac. Is there a way to sync photos So that the same photos are on my on iPhone, iPad, 27” Mac and Mac mini, but not by using icloud.
Thanks for your excellent videos
Terry: iCloud is what does that. So why not use iCloud? You can use manual sync like before iCloud, but that just means syncing from new pictures from iPhone to Mac all the time, and then syncing back to iPhone and iPad all the time, over and over. iCloud does it without any action on your part, automatically and all the time. So, why don't you want to use it?
Hi Gary. Thanks for the photos tutorial. A couple of years ago when I had by old macbook pro I was running out of memory so I transfered my photos to an external drive. I now have a new Macbook and plenty of memory and would like all my photos in one place on my new mac. How can I add the old photos off the external drive to my current photos on the mac?
Bruce: It all depends. Are the old photos files, or in a Photos library? If they are files, just drag and drop them in. If they are in a separate library it gets tricky. You could switch to that library and then make it your system library, let it merge to iCloud, then switch back to your current library. Or you could just switch to it and export all the photos and import them into your current library. Lots of choices.
When taking photos with my iPhone, the files are so large that I can't upload them to many sites or to some email accounts. How can I reduce the digital size of each photo that I take. Also, my iPhone, iPadPro, MacBook Pro photos do not sync, why? I do have an iCloud account but you'd think I could access all my photos on each device. Thank you in advance.
Celeste: The photos are pretty standard size. Not sure why a site is having trouble with that in 2023. As for Mail, if you do try to send a large photo, then you are prompted with an option to compress it. But if you aren't seeing that, then the image isn't considered that big. As for syncing issues, you may not have iCloud Photos turned on across all of your devices.
Gary, following up on your answer above, "I would occasionally export the work photos and store them as files or in another library", how would I do that? Wondering if you can offer a way of organizing thru examples. Thank you so much!
Justine: Use the technique I show here to export "Unmodified Originals" from Photos. Then once you are sure you have these as files and don't need them in your Photos app anymore, delete them from there.
I would like to maintain a Photos library, with albums etc, outside iCloud and not copying imported files, but still sync the selected albums from that library to my iPhone when syncing/backing-up the phone. I can't seem to get this to work, as the sync process only offers albums from the iCloud library. How can I do this? Thanks for all the very helpful info!
Joe: You'd need to turn off iCloud Photos on your iPhone to do that. You can have it both ways on your iPhone: iCloud and not iCloud.
Hey Garry, I have over 1.3 Tb of iCloud storage and this is an issue. However I frequently find myself looking through the photos search to find those old photos as references for my work such as notes, examples of stuff I'm working on, etc. Is it possible to offload full resolution photos/videos to an external drive but keep compressed (optimized) versions in iCloud to cut down on the space but keep the accessibility. then when I need the full resolution I just pull out the external drive.
William: That would be a lot of work to set up, and then a ton of ongoing work to deal with forever after. Are photos really the bulk of your 1.3 TB? Or is it videos? Or other files in iCloud Drive? Figure out what is really taking up the space. Offloading photos like you suggest sounds like a very bad solution to me.
How do you convert your Photo Library from "100% of photos are stored INSIDE the Photo Library" to "100% of photos are now referenced files in another location like an external drive" without losing anything from the previous tagging and keyword system ?
Philippe: You can't. So what is your goal here? Why do you want to change everything like this. BTW, it will also mean you won't be able to use iCloud Photos at all, since referenced files are not included.
I have not been using Photos or iCloud. I have stored pictures and videos in a folder on an external drive with subfolders for year and then further subfolders for date. There is about 6TB of data. I would like to now use Photos, but my MacBook Pro only has a 2TB drive. I have used Photos for converting some Live Photos to .mov files so there is a library on my Mac. What would be the best way to move the Photos library to the external HD (16TB) and then merge the photos and videos into Photos?
Mel: So you have 6TB of photos? Are they all photos, or are some videos too? I have 37,000 photos and that takes up 185MB of space. So that would make your library 1.2 million photos? Is that right?
I suppose you could set up a Photos library on your external drive, then move the photos into it. Then turn on iCloud Photos. You'll need an iCloud account big enough for 6TB and then some though.
My "files" library includes digitized home movies from VHS and 8mm sources which I captured in Quicktime using the "Maximum" setting so those files are very large. I also digitized negatives from our film camera days (pre-2001 in my case) and used a fairly high resolution so each of those files averages 170MB. Digitizing these analog sources also presents a problem (I suspect) if imported into Photos library, as the date of creation will not be "correct" presuming Photos will sort by date...
Mel: So many consider leaving those digitized videos from the past as files where they are, and moving only digital photos to your Photos library. That actually what I do.
Thanks for great advice. I appreciate your tutorials and have learned much from you. Keep up the good work!