Can You Delete Photos Library From Mac

Can You Delete Photos Library From Mac 4,8/5 70 votes

If you have iCloud Photo Library and want to back up all your photos to a storage device attached to your Mac you can follow the guide above, but you will need to add the step of downloading the. Mar 17, 2019 If you're using iCloud Photo Library, anything you delete on your Mac will also be deleted on all your other iCloud Photo Library-enabled devices, including your iPhone and/or iPad. Deleted pictures and videos can be recovered for up to 30 days (unless you have zero storage space on your computer), or can be deleted immediately and forever. Dec 20, 2017 If you delete any photos from the official 'Photos' app on your Mac, it will also remove them from iCloud. If you want to keep that space free, go under your Photo app settings on your Mac and optimize for space. This will prevent it from downloading the high-res versions stored locally on your machine. How to Delete All ‌Photos‌ on Your Mac Launch the ‌Photos‌ app on your Mac. Select ‌Photos‌ from the Library section at the top of the left column. Press the key combination Command+A to select all photos in your library. Press the Backspace key. Alternatively, right-click any photo and select. Turn off iCloud Photo Library without Deleting Photos Mac. Now, if you're a Mac user, the process is slightly different. So, if you've already been storing all of your images on your Mac, you'll just need to make sure everything is synced. Hop into Photos on your Mac, select Photos, hit Preferences and then click on the iCloud tab. To delete Photos library on Mac: Step 1 Go to Finder. Step 2 Open your system disk Users Pictures. Step 3 Drag the Photos Library you want to delete to the Trash. Step 4 Empty the Trash.

If you’re using the new Photos app on your Mac instead of the older iPhoto app, you most likely have a duplicate photo library floating around on your hard drive. For a lot of people, that could mean gigs and gigs of wasted storage space, especially on shared Macs with multiple migrated libraries.

Here’s how to check for multiple libraries and how to delete them…

Before deleting your old library: Make a backup

While the Photos app should have imported all your photos and videos just fine, I always recommend having backups handy. Perhaps you’ll delete an old photo by accident at some point and want it back later. If you have a copy of your old iPhoto library still handy, you can pull it form there as a last resort.

I saved my old iPhoto library to my Dropbox account. You can of course use any service of your choice, or just drop it onto an external hard disk you have laying around. Regardless of how you do it, I’d highly recommend saving a copy before deleting it.

Once you’ve backed up your old iPhoto library (if you chose to do so), you can proceed with deleting it:

  1. Open a new Finder window on your Mac.
  2. Click on Pictures in the left hand navigation. If it isn’t there, just search for your pictures folder using Spotlight.
  3. You should see two libraries, one is your old iPhoto Library and one is your new Photos library.
  4. Move your iPhoto Library to your trash can and empty it.

Check the storage space on your Mac, you should notice that you have more storage space available. If you are on a shared Mac and have multiple user logins, everyone using the new version of Photos on that Mac should make sure they don’t also have duplicate libraries.

I’m not sure why Apple doesn’t create a process to delete old versions of libraries after migrating to Photos, but they should. Until that happens, you’ll have to delete your old library manually.

Give this tip a try and see how much storage space you were able to clear up. As you can see in the screens above, my old iPhoto library was over 30GB, which was definitely a healthy chunk of hard drive space that I now have back.

Your Mac storage tips?

This is one of many ways to regain storage space on your Mac without having to sacrifice losing data. But we know there are lots of others. What are some of your favorite Mac storage tips for recapturing space? We’ve love to hear them in the comments!

Update

A follower on Twitter referenced to me an article written on Six Colors pointing out that the library is actually hard-linked between versions. While this may be true when you first migrate, it seems that if you make any changes to any files and the libraries become different, splicing can and will occur.

To test this theory, I deleted my iPhoto library on my other Mac to see how much storage was freed up. For those wondering, my iPhoto library was 35.99 GB and my Photos library was 41.16 GB. You can see the before and after results on my hard disk space below. I was able to free up over 20 GB of space. So I’m not sure what I think about hard linking or how well it’s actually working between Photos and iPhoto.

Bottom line, if you’re short on storage space and you want to free some up, there’s really not much point in having two photo libraries floating around on your Mac. Hard linking or not, deleting the old library will free up space in almost every case.

-'I upgraded to Yosemite and migrated my iPhoto library to the new Photos app. I’m happy with Photos and do not plan to go back to iPhoto. However, I’m bothered by the wired and misleading sizes reported by Finder because of the old iPhoto library. How can I delete iPhoto library without damaging my Photos library?'

-'The reason why I’m asking is because my Mac is running low on disk space, and I can free up 64GB of space on my hard drive by deleting the iPhoto library. Can anybody show me how to delete iPhoto library after moving to external hard drive?'

Most people have updated and migrated photos from iPhoto to Photos on Mac already. As a result, you will get duplicate pictures stored in iPhoto library.

Moreover, some people complain that it is quite annoying to receive notifications about iPhoto all the time. So if you have backed up important photos from iPhoto library, then you can delete iPhoto and photos duplicate right now.

Part 1: How Do I Clean Out My iPhoto Library

Just as mentioned above, once you upgrade your Mac from iPhoto to Photos, there will be a second photo library. So if you want to free up more storage space, you need to empty iPhoto library or delete it directly. For people who choose the first one, here are steps you can follow.

Step 1: Open 'Finder' and search for your iPhoto library.

Step 2: Highlight the items you want to delete.

Step 3: Right click and choose 'Show Package Contents'.

Step 4: Select multiple pictures and right click to get 'Move to Trash'.

Step 5: Empty the Trash to delete iPhoto Library after backup.

What if people just want to empty iPhoto library? If you insist on using iPhoto instead of Photos app, then you can head to iPhoto app to delete all photos in iPhoto as well.

Library data.table on mac. Test.data.table is a reliable way to test your installation. The full suite of over 5,000 tests runs locally on your machine and should not take more than 2 minutes. The full suite of over 5,000 tests runs locally on your machine and should not take more than 2 minutes. Jan 12, 2020  You can access the hidden Library folder without using Terminal, which has the side effect of revealing every hidden file on your Mac. This method will only make the Library folder visible, and only for as long as you keep the Finder window for the Library folder open. Oct 13, 2017  Fixed crash/hang on MacOS when parallel::mclapply is used and data.table is merely loaded, #2418. Oddly, all tests including test 1705 (which tests mclapply with data.table) passed fine on CRAN. It appears to be some versions of MacOS or some versions of libraries on MacOS, perhaps.

Step 1: Launch iPhoto app and choose your unwanted photos.

Step 2: Click 'Photos' on the top tool bar.

How To Delete Pictures From Macbook Air

Step 3: Select 'Move to Trash' from its drop-down list.

Step 4: Choose 'Trash' in the left panel.

Step 5: Click 'Empty Trash' and then choose 'OK' to confirm the deletion in iPhoto.

Later, you need to empty the trash bin of your Mac computer as well.

In this way, you could also use the third-party software to recover photos on Mac.

Part 2: Can I Delete the Migrated iPhoto Library

After you have migrated iPhoto pictures to Photos app, you can delete an old iPhoto library on Mac directly. There is no need to create a backup before deleting iPhoto library pictures.

However, some people worry about the security of the current Photos app. Well, it does not matter a lot. You can follow steps below to delete iPhoto library after moving to Photos safely.

How Do You Delete Photo Library On Mac

Step 1: Quit iPhoto and Photos app before the process.

Step 2: Head to 'Finder' and click 'Pictures' in its left panel.

Step 3: Choose 'iPhoto Library.library' file.

Step 4: Drag and drop it to the Trash.

Can I Delete Migrated Photo Library Mac

Step 5: Right click over “Trash” and choose 'Empty Trash'.

As a result, you can delete iPhoto library pictures and regain Mac storage space easily. Check this post if you want to delete downloads on iPhone.

Part 3: How Do You Permanently Delete Photos from iPhoto Library

Actually, you can run Apeaksoft Mac Cleaner to delete all duplicate photos. Moreover, this powerful program can help you find and delete all duplicate videos, documents, music and other files.

So you can clean up Mac and remove those duplicate items completely. In addition, Mac Cleaner allows users to delete any unwanted Mac data permanently, including cookies, caches and other private files.

  • Delete junk files, large & old files and other unwanted files off your Mac permanently.
  • Find and delete duplicates photos or other files on your Mac.
  • Uninstall any unwanted app and the associated files.
  • Protect your privacy and clean worthless files in one click.
  • Monitor your Mac performance including disk utilization, battery status, memory performance and CPU usage.
Download for Mac

How to Delete Duplicate iPhoto Library Photos on Mac Quickly

Step 1: Launch Mac Cleaner

Free download and install Mac Cleaner software. Launch this duplicate photo finder on your Mac computer. Then you can click 'Scan' in the default 'System Status' page to see the current condition of your Mac.

Step 2: Scan your duplicate photos

Click 'Similar Image Finder' under 'Tools' in the left panel. Then choose 'Scan' to start to search all duplicate photos including iPhoto library photos. Wait for a while for complete the process.

Step 3: Delete images in iPhoto library

Sort out the certain duplicate images from the drop-down 'Sort By' list on the top. Choose one photo and preview it with the detail information. Later, click the small box before the duplicate photo you want to delete. Choose 'Clean' to delete duplicate iPhoto library pictures instantly.

Later, restart your computer to check if those duplicated iPhoto photos have been removed or not. In addition, Mac Cleaner can help you find not only all duplicate images, but also other types of duplicate files. Just head to 'Duplicate Finder' to search and delete duplicate files efficiently.

At last but not least, you can transfer photos to cloud storage space like iCloud, Dropbox and more (Backup Mac to iCloud). It is a good way to preserve your previous memory and keep your Mac clean.

How To Delete Photos Library From Mac

Moreover, you can access those photos on any Apple device easily.