Mac How To Merge Photo Libraries

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.

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

Prepare your drive

Fortunately, PowerPhotos for macOS High Sierra and recent macOS versions, works much like the older iPhoto Library Manager for Macs running Photos in OS X. Create and manage multiple photo libraries, copy photos and metadata from one library to another; even merge photo libraries. And, of course, you can find and delete duplicate photos. PowerPhotos provides an actual interface for merging too—choose Library Merge Libraries to start. In the window that appears, you have four tasks: Choose source libraries. You aren’t limited to merging just two libraries; you can pick multiple sources. Choose the destination library. This is the library you want to receive all the photos.

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.

Mac How To Merge Photo Libraries In Iphoto

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

Photo

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.

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.

As of OS X Yosemite, Apple is encouraging everyone to use its new Photos program for managing pictures in OS X. Library opengl mac. While Photos has a number of pros and cons, it does share a limitation of its “iPhoto” predecessor, in that while it uses a library system for managing photos and offers an option to create multiple libraries, it can only have one open at a time. This means that if you wish to consolidate libraries, you might find yourself jumping through hoops; however, there is a relatively simple way to get this done.

First, the classic way of doing this would be to use an export/import option:

Mac How To Merge Photo Libraries Catalina

  1. Open Photos while holding the Option key
  2. Select your desired Library to open
  3. Select all items and export them to a folder
  4. Quit and re-open Photos while holding the Option key
  5. Select a second library to open
  6. Import all of the items into this second library.
This approach will undoubtedly take a long time, and will require you essentially duplicate your library contents more than once to consolidate them import them all into the second library. While it may be doable for those with only a few libraries to manage, for those with a number of different libraries, the following approach may be more streamlined:

Consolidate Iphoto Libraries

  1. Open Photos to load your current library (or open with the Option key held to choose a different or new library to use)
  2. Open the Terminal utility (in the Applications > Utilities folder)
  3. Type the following command, then hold the Option key immediately after pressing Enter to execute it:

When you do this, a second instance of the Photos application will open, and will request you select a library. Do this for a different library, and you will now have two Photos windows on your screen with different libraries open. Now you can select some or all the photos from one library, and drag them into the second Photos window to add them to that library. You can do this for individual photos, entire moments, or custom selections as you browse through your photos.

How To Merge Photo Libraries On Mac

Note that copying in this manner may cause Photos to briefly hang and show your cursor as a spinning beachball, but do not interrupt the process. After a short while, your photos will be copied and show up in your second library. You will also see a notification that confirms the number of photos imported.

This window will pop up if you held the Option key at the appropriate time when launching an instances of Photos (if not, then quit Photos and try again). Use it to select a photo library other than the one open in your primary instance of Photos.

When done, close the second instance of the Photos application, and then repeat the Terminal command (press the Up arrow to quickly load the previously-entered command–be sure to hold the Option key after pressing Enter), to load a new library and copy your files into your main library.

How To Merge Photo Libraries Mac

One quick warning with this approach, is that you should not load the same library in two separate instances of Photos, as this may lead to conflicts in how data in the library is handled, and could corrupt the library. Therefore, just be sure you load separate libraries in separate instances of Photos, and you should be good to go.