1. How To Free Up Photo Library Storage On Mac Free
2. Photo Library Download

Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.

Sep 11, 2018 Mac: How to free up space with iCloud Photos optimized storage. Open Photos and click Photos in the menu bar (top left corner) Click Preferences. Make sure the iCloud tab is selected. Click Optimize Mac Storage if iCloud Photo Library is already turned on. Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy. If you have more than one photo library, be sure to back them all up.

1. Nov 09, 2018 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.
2. Now, if you click on the iCloud tab, you should see that your stuff is syncing and will be restored to your new Photo Library as soon as it’s downloaded, while anything you add will be uploaded. A quick check on our photos reveals that indeed that they’re synced and now show up in our Photos library on our Mac, just like they do on our iPad.
3. To free up space, you can disable iCloud Photo Library and Photo Stream by tapping on “Photos” from the main iCloud screen and disabling these features. Instead of using iCloud Photo Library, try another app like Google Photos, Dropbox, or Flickr that can automatically back up your photos. They will back up your photos to a separate pool of.
4. Jun 19, 2018 To free up disk space, it’s helpful to know exactly what is using disk space on your Mac. A hard disk analysis tool like Disk Inventory X will scan your Mac’s hard disk and display which folders and files are using up the most space. You can then delete these space hogs to free up space.

* If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

How To Free Up Photo Library Storage On Mac Free

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac, then click Storage. This is an overview of available storage space on your Mac, as well as the space used by different categories of files:

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. (The Manage button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.)

Jan 05, 2020  If you want your Mac's photos to wirelessly sync to all your other iOS devices and computers, you want to set up iCloud Photo Library: Apple's photo sync service lets you back up your images on all your devices, as well as access them — online or offline — on said devices.If you're willing to pay for the extra iCloud storage space, you can store an incredible amount of photos and videos. How to download all your iCloud photos to your Mac. As we said above, one of the benefits of using iCloud Photo Library is that it makes it possible to view all your photos on all of your devices. In the iCloud tab, make sure iCloud Photo Library is enabled. It may not be, because you switched libraries. It may not be, because you switched libraries. Then choose Download Originals to This Mac. How to download icloud photo library to mac.

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.

Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

• Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  
• Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  
• Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

Optimize Storage

Click the Optimize button, then choose from these options.

• Automatically remove watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from the iTunes Store and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.
  
• Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you recently received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.
  
• Don't automatically download attachments. Mail downloads an attachment only when you open the email or attachment, or save the attachment to your Mac.

Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days. Mac os sierra won't find photo library for screensaver.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.

Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

• If you're using macOS Catalina, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. Then click Options next to iCloud Drive: Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders setting. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
  In macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings.
• In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
• In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.

• If you're using macOS Catalina, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
  In macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
• In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

• Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
• Reminds you to delete used app installers
• Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
• Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimized Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

Photo Library Download

• Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
• Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
• Move files to an external storage device.
• Compress files.
• Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Learn more

• When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
• If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.

Updated February 2017: Added additional tips for freeing up storage space.

Pictures and video take up a ton of storage space, and for good reason — all that data is what makes your photographs and snaps look phenomenal. But if you're hitting that pesky 'out of storage' error while trying to take pictures on a 16GB iPhone, phenomenal photos become less of a delight — you'd settle for being able to take any photo, at that point.

Luckily, you don't have to compromise: Apple's iCloud Photo Library lets you store all your images and video online, freeing valuable storage space on your device. And if you're still having trouble, we've got a few other tips to help get you back to image snapping glory.

How to enable iCloud Photo Library and free up storage space

By default, when you take a photo with your iPhone or iPad, it gets stored on that device. Snap a selfie? Shoot a video? All of it gets locally saved. But photos and videos take up valuable storage space — and it can be a pain to constantly remember to move old photos to your computer (or delete old images) so that you can take new ones.

Instead, Apple offers iCloud Photo Library: If you've ever used Dropbox before, it's like that —When you turn on iCloud Photo Library and are on Wi-Fi, Apple will automatically and securely upload all images and video from your iPhone or iPad to your iCloud account, where it can then be redownloaded and synced to your Mac, iPad, iPhone, or the web via iCloud.com; any piece of tech that has iCloud Photo Library enabled will receive any photo or video present on your other synced devices.

This is a pretty nice sync and backup system to ensure that all your images are on all your devices, but it doesn't solve the problem about having too many images on your iPhone or iPad: When you delete an image locally, it will try and delete it everywhere if iCloud Photo Library is enabled. Not exactly what the average user wants.

Instead, Apple offers an option called Optimize Storage: When checked, your iPhone or iPad will locally store only the latest images and video you've shot or viewed; the others live up in iCloud, ready to be downloaded when you need them — and not taking up storage space when you don't.

When you try to view or edit an image you haven't downloaded yet, you'll see a low-resolution thumbnail along with a white circle in the bottom right corner; as long as you have an internet connection, that image will then download locally to your device, where it can be shared or edited at full resolution. Once you download a certain number of images and video, your device will intelligently sync the oldest ones you've viewed back up to iCloud and then delete them from local storage, thus preventing you from having to do manual image and video pruning.

If you think this sounds like a good deal for your iPhone, you're right: It keeps your local storage happy and saves you from having to delete adorable baby pictures of your cousin.

Here's how you go about setting up iCloud Photo Library and Optimize Storage.

1. Make sure you're on Wi-Fi.
2. Enable iCloud Photo Library.
3. Launch the Settings app.

4. Tap Photos & Camera.

5. Select Optimize Storage.

Once you do so, iCloud will automatically remove full-resolution versions of older images from your device, storing only the most recent images locally.

The rest of those images and video will continue to be stored safely in iCloud at full resolution and in their native format — JPG, PNG, MOV, or RAW — and continue to be downloaded to all other devices where you've selected the 'Download and Keep Originals' option. (I highly encourage enabling this full storage option on a device like a desktop Mac, so you always have a full offline backup of your photos.)

It may take a while for these changes to take place, especially if you're on a slower Wi-Fi network, so don't despair if your storage space doesn't initially free up.

How to free up more space on your iPhone to take photos

If you have a 16GB or 32GB iPhone, turning on iCloud Photo Library might not be enough — you may need to do some more sprucing on your iPhone to make your Camera happy. Here are a few tips I've found that work well to quickly clear up space.

1. See what's taking up space

Not sure what's clogging up room on your iPhone? You can check your available space at any time by going to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage.

2. Delete apps

From the storage management section, you can see exactly what apps are hogging your iPhone or iPad's available space — and, if you want to, delete them right then and there by tapping on the app and pressing Delete App. Be warned, however, that if you delete certain apps, you may delete any saved or stored data, as well.

3. Prune your Messages

By default, the Messages app saves all the gifs, stickers, videos, and other multimedia you share with your friends directly to your device: To get rid of it, you have to manually delete threads from the Messages app.But you can prevent clogging from happening in the future: In Settings > Messages, you can reduce the largesse of your messages files by changing how long you Keep Messages (30 days, a year, or forever) and by turning on Low Quality Image Mode, which automatically reduces the file size of potentially gigantic gifs and other photos.

4. Prune your Music

If you don't use Apple Music (or even if you do but have songs saved offline), your local music library can quickly overwhelm your iPhone. To keep your Adele songs from choking your selfie game, go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage > Music, then swipe left on any artist entry you wish to delete.

And if you have an Apple Music or iTunes Match subscription, you can further reduce your storage costs by turning on Optimize Storage in Settings > Music.

5. Check out our other storage tips

These tricks not work for you? We've collected a few other suggestions for items you can trim from your iPhone or iPad below.

Questions?

Any other tips, tricks, or questions about freeing up your local storage or iCloud space so that you can snap photographs? Let us know in the comments.

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