The ability to take beautiful photographs — and look at them immediately — on a device that fits in your pocket has removed much of the friction surrounding storing, organizing, and sharing your personal works of art.
By default, Photos will create the library in your Pictures folder on your Mac on your start-up drive. If there is no more free storage on your startup drive, you need to remove files and folders to an external drive to make room for the system to work properly. Tech 101: How to Quickly Free Up Mac Storage Space Wednesday, April 25th, 2018 Author: Steve Sande. Owning a new Mac is a great feeling — it’s the fastest it’s ever going to be, there are no scratches or dings on the computer, and you have what seems like an unlimited amount of storage space. Deleted photos from MacBook but storage space not reclaimed. Can my Mac save photos from iCloud Photo Library, but not upload to it? Macbook disk space show as.
But this sea change in photography has created new issues, such as:
While Photos for macOS lets you maintain multiple Photos libraries, only one library at a time can be designated the System Photo Library, and only the System Photo Library can sync with iCloud. 10 Mac storage tips to help you free up extra hard drive space. ICloud Photo Library gives you the ability to offload all your photos and videos to the “cloud”, instead of your Mac’s.
iCloud Photo Library is Apple’s solution to these issues. There are competing options, such as Google Photos, Lightroom mobile, Mylio, and Amazon Prime Photos (all explained in Jeff Carlson’s “Take Control of Your Digital Photos on a Mac”), but the idea behind all of them is basically the same:
This cloud-based approach has a couple of welcome byproducts. Although it shouldn’t be seen as the backup, a cloud-based photo library certainly does provide another copy of everything in a location that’s safe from fire, flood, or theft. Also, sharing photos with family and friends becomes a bit easier.
If you decide to use iCloud Photo Library, here are four things to think about before you flip that switch and turn it on.
Cull Photos First… Or Not — Many of the features of Apple’s Photos app — automatic albums like Selfies and Screenshots, facial recognition, Memories, and searching for photos by generic categories like Mountains or Snow — eliminate much of the tedium of organizing photos and help us avoid throwing things away.
After all, why toss any photos when Photos can organize most of them automatically for later reference? It’s much more fun to keep shooting than to engage in the chore of trashing photos that, upon further review, you’d be ashamed to admit you took.
How does this apply to iCloud Photo Library? If you have time now, you might want to delete unnecessary photos like the eight nearly identical photos I apparently just took of my sleeping cat (who, like most sleeping cats, didn’t move the entire time). That will reduce the upload and download times for iCloud.
On the other hand, if you’re thinking that it would be way more fun to clean up your photo collection while lounging on the couch with your iPad in the future, just leave all the cruft in place for now — you can always trash it later.
Start with the Host with the Most — It may take quite a bit of time to upload all your photos and videos to your iCloud Photo Library: days or even weeks, depending on your upstream Internet speed and how many photos and videos you have.
In my case, the vast majority of my several thousand photos and videos were stored on my Mac. Many were duplicated on my iPad and iPhone because I had manually synced them there at some point in the past. So I started with the Mac, and even with the library culling that I performed, it still took several days to finish.
But there are plenty of people who have all or most of their photos on an iPhone or iPad, or maybe don’t even own a Mac. If you’re in that situation, start from the device that contains most of your photos and videos. Once that first upload is done, you can repeat the process with your other devices.
Happily, to make sure you don’t chew through your monthly data limit uploading photos, iOS devices won’t upload to the iCloud Photo Library using a cellular connection, just via Wi-Fi.
Jan 04, 2020 Add Folder to Library Now it's time to move your iTunes content. Open the File menu in iTunes and click Add Folder to Library (Windows) or Add to Library (Mac). Nov 18, 2014 Launch iTunes while holding down the Option key A dialog box will open, asking whether you want to 'Cancel', 'Create a new library', or 'Choose an Existing Library'. Select 'Choose Library', then navigate to where you moved the iTunes folder. Remember that you will overwrite any existing music files in your library.
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If you find your Mac or iOS device is getting bogged down, or your Internet connection has slowed considerably as a result of all the uploading, you can pause the upload. It will resume automatically after a day, or you can start it again manually before bed. On the Mac the Pause button is in Photos > Preferences > iCloud; in iOS look for it in Settings > Photos & Camera.
Optimize Photos Where Appropriate — iCloud Photo Library always stores your photos and videos in the cloud at their original full resolutions.
But you likely don’t have enough space on your iPhone or iPad, or even possibly on a MacBook Air, to store all that data. That’s why Apple gives you the option to instead store “optimized” versions (small thumbnails) on any of your devices. When you want to work with an optimized photo, Photos downloads the original.
Think carefully about where you store full-resolution and optimized versions of photos. I opted for optimized copies on my iPhone and iPad, but I chose to keep the full-resolution versions on my Mac. The Mac is where I tend to exercise my meager photo-editing skills, and I would prefer not to wait for each photo to download before I edit it.
In addition, I back up my Mac both locally via Time Machine and via the online service Backblaze, which puts my full photo library in four different places — iCloud Photo Library, my Mac’s drive, my Time Machine backup drive, and Backblaze. Should disaster strike, I’m confident that I won’t lose any precious photos.
Space Is Money — My Photo Stream was Apple’s initial foray into syncing a limited number of user photos via the cloud, and the photos it syncs do not count against an iCloud account’s storage limits (it doesn’t work with videos). In contrast, all the photos and videos in iCloud Photo Library do count against that storage limit.
A free iCloud account gives you 5 GB to get started. But, particularly if you’re backing up an iOS device or two, a photo library of any decent size won’t come close to fitting in that space.
Fortunately, Apple notifies you before you start uploading if your iCloud account needs more storage space, and you can buy additional iCloud storage at a relatively low cost: $0.99 per month for 50 GB, $2.99 for 200 GB, $9.99 for 1 TB, or $19.99 for 2 TB.
In my case, I needed to do only a little bit of editing to whittle my photo library down so it was comfortably below the 50 GB mark, giving me some room for short-term growth and saving me a couple of bucks a month. For me, it wasn’t worth paying for the extra space up front with an eventual goal of taming the photo library later, especially since I hadn’t been especially motivated to do so for several years. In addition, there are three other members of my family with their own iCloud accounts, so walking the talk was a factor in my decision.
That said, most people probably can’t drop their library size significantly enough to fit comfortably into a lower pricing tier. And remember, at 2–3 MB per iPhone photo, library size can grow quickly. Still, there’s no reason to pay more than necessary; Apple will happily tell you if you need to upgrade again in the future.
Annoyingly, there’s no way to buy iCloud storage for a year at a time, so you’ll be getting and accounting for a small iCloud storage payment every month no matter what.
Flip the Switch — Once you’ve thought about these things and are ready to go, turn on iCloud Photo Library in Photos > Preferences > iCloud on the Mac, or in Settings > Photos & Camera in iOS. Then reward yourself with a favorite beverage, particularly if you’ve done any pruning of your photo library.
While you wait for your photos to upload, which will take days or even weeks, you can still use your Mac or iOS device normally. Do not stare at the progress count or try to second-guess what’s happening. And in particular, do not turn iCloud Photo Library off and back on, since that will force the system to evaluate every photo again, slowing the process further. Just let it run and it will finish eventually.
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In the meantime, can I recommend a relaxing hobby that will get you away from the screen, like maybe photography?
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.
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Before you start, be sure to back up your library.
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
Mac Photo Library Not Enough Space On PcDelete 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:
Mac Photo Library Not Enough Space Meme
Photos uses this library until you open a different one.
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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.
Mac Photo Library Not Enough Space On Netflix
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.
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