How To Move Between Photo Libraries On Mac

How To Move Between Photo Libraries On Mac 4,0/5 8437 votes

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

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.

But, you can edit photos or modify albums in only one library at a time. IPhoto allows you to choose a location to store the new photo library including an external hard drive, if you have one connected. Here are the steps to Create a New iPhoto Library and Switch Between Libraries: To Create a New Photo Library: Quit 'iPhoto' on your Mac. Apr 09, 2015  Step 3: Open /Pictures and you should see at least two photo libraries: one for the new—Photos Library— and one for the old—iPhoto Library. Step 4: Double click on Photos Library and it should launch the new Photos app. Verify that the Photos app is empty, which it should be on a new installation of OS X Yosemite 10.10.3. Apr 22, 2015  How to use multiple photo libraries with Photos for Mac. Photos for Mac lets you work with multiple libraries. Learn how to choose a default library, open another library, and merge multiple. Feb 04, 2012  This is a quick photo about how to copy photos between two iPhoto libraries. This is a quick photo about how to copy photos between two iPhoto libraries. Skip navigation. Jul 01, 2011  Can I move photos between libraries on different volumes in Aperture? Thread starter macbook123. You can accomplish this in a few different ways though. Personally, I like using multiple libraries. It's not that difficult to move files around from library to library and it allows me to use managed files throughout. IPad, and Mac.

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.

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.

Is there any way to fix this?I’ve received a number of emails like this in recent weeks, all lamenting the fact that people’s iTunes libraries, and their iOS devices, have become as hard to navigate as a bayou in the night.I share the pain of the many people who have written about these problems. Restore previous itunes library on mac. I won’t use iCloud Music Library on my main iTunes library; I only have it activated on my MacBook, which has a much smaller library.

How To Move Photo Library Mac

1. You can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups.

How To Move Between Photo Libraries On Mac Computer

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.