New app share playlist spotify apple music. 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 Library and use Optimise Mac Storage, or move your photo library to an external drive.

Before you start, make sure that you 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.

Copy the Photos Library from your Pictures Folder to an external disk. Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch Photos. From the resulting menu select “Other Library” and navigate to the new location. You’ll get a message that says: “This library contains items that need to download from iCloud Photo Library.”. How to safely move your Mac's iPhoto library onto an external drive. By Stephen Robles Saturday, January 24, 2015, 11:00 pm PT (02:00 am ET) Today's digital cameras and advanced smartphones like.

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

Quit Photos.
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 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 that 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
After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
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 disc space.

Mac Move Photos Library From External Drive Iphone

Open another Photos library

Warcraft 3 reign of chaos free download mac. If you have multiple libraries, you can open a different one like this:

Quit Photos.
Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.

Photos uses this library until you open a different one.

Copy Photos Library To External Drive

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 disc that's used for Time Machine backups.

Mac Photos Library Location

Download xcode 8 dmg without app store. 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 deleted, this checkbox will either not be present or won't be selectable after unlocking. Delete and reformat the drive for this option to be available.