How To Get More Space On Photo Library Mac

Aug 24, 2015  Open a new Finder window on your Mac. Click on Pictures in the left hand navigation. If it isn’t there, just search for your pictures folder using Spotlight. You should see two libraries, one is your old iPhoto Library and one is your new Photos library. Move your iPhoto Library to. Mar 18, 2020  Move your Photos library to an external storage device. 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.

  1. How To Free Space On Photo Library Mac
  2. How To Free Up Space On Photo Library Mac
  3. How To Get More Space On Photo Library Mac Torrent

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

Location iphoto library mac os x. 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

How To Free Space On Photo Library Mac

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.

Open mac library files. The library opens in a Finder window.To permanently show all hidden files:. In the Terminal window, enter 'open library'.

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.

Power up

Anker's PowerCore Wireless 10K charger is a battery pack without the fuss

Anker is out with a new wireless battery pack that'll keep things ticking along no matter where you are.

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.

How To Free Up Space On Photo Library Mac

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

Space

Prepare your drive

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.

How To Get More Space On Photo Library Mac Torrent

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.

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.