Any way to reduce photos library size on a MacBook Air?

[Ru_C]

Hi all, I've purchased a second hand 2020 M1 Air for a roadtrip.

Its the base model with only 256gb of storage.

I had hoped to reduce my photos library footprint by ticking the 'Optimise Mac Storage' option, in photos/settings, rather than 'Download originals the this Mac'

My 80gb photos library, still takes up 37gb though, even with this option ticked.

I was hoping Photos would store mostly lower-res/proxy versions, & be under 5gb, unless I actually clicked on a photo, when it would download the original.

Am I doing something wrong? Or is there a trick to shrinking the library on machines with limited storage.

Cheers

 

[fatTribble]

The footprint on your hard drive will shrink when more space is needed by other files. Basically you shouldn’t have to worry about it.

 

[Ru_C]

The footprint on your hard drive will shrink when more space is needed by other files. Basically you shouldn’t have to worry about it.

Thanks for the reply. is it really that intelligent? I don't trust it for a second haha.

If I'm trying to copy 50gb onto a drive with 40gb of space left, I don't trust photo to 'start removing originals on-the-fly'. Or is macOS really that intelligent?

is there any way to force it to use 'thumbnails only' unless you view a picture?

 

[fatTribble]

It will free up space as needed but only to a point. You don’t have any other settings to control the behavior. Maybe try it and report back the results?

 

[Ru_C]

It will free up space as needed but only to a point. You don’t have any other settings to control the behavior. Maybe try it and report back the results?

yeah fair point, I guess I could try copying some big files over & see what it does.

Ive backed up the full 80gb version to an external drive, so I might also try drilling down into the Photo's library & just delete the 'originals' folder from there, to try & trick it If to all goes wrong I can restore from backup

 

[fatTribble]

Honestly I would not do that. Just use it as intended or you’ll be back here trying to recover your photos.

 

[Ru_C]

Honestly I would not do that. Just use it as intended or you’ll be back here trying to recover your photos.

Ok, well I just tried copying slightly more data over than I have free space, & just came up with the 'Non enough space' error dialog.

Interestingly, if I go to system-settings/general/storage, Photos is reportedly using 3.9gb (which is what I would expect for preview quality photos), but in the finder its showing as 37gb.,,,& if I drill down into the library, it really is 37gb locally...I can view the 1000's of original 25mb photo files

 

[HDFan]

I just tried copying slightly more data over than I have free space,

Remember the general recommendation for storage media that you need to keep ~30% of your storage free.

 

[Cyby-CyberDog]

Am I doing something wrong? Or is there a trick to shrinking the library on machines with limited storage.

Cheers

Are you using iCloud Photo Libary? If so, you can create a new photo library on your new macbook air, make it the system library and configure the library as system library using storage optimization.

 

[NoBoMac]

Ive backed up the full 80gb version to an external drive,

Or just use the library on external: start Photos with the Option key and select the external library when prompted for a library.

 

[6749974]

I haven't done this yet, but one "trick" I read about is creating a volume with a 40 GB limit (for example), and then putting your Apple Photos library into that. The library should then self-manage and reduce its size to, say, 20 GB. Will that work? I don't have experience to say yes or no but may be worth a try.

 

[avkills]

Not sure if iCloud Photo Library works the same as Lightroom, but in Lightroom my photo masters are all on an external drive; but I can still open Lightroom without the drive plugged in to see preview files.

Photo management is a pain no matter how you do it IMO.

 

[TechnoMonk]

Depends on how much of it is purgable. If you look at the info on the space left, it should tell you how much the OS can recover, not just from photos but from the overall drive. you should see something like this.. If I want to dig deep into where my disk space is utilized, I find Omni Disksweeper much better than the default Manage storage option on Mac.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Hi all, I've purchased a second hand 2020 M1 Air for a roadtrip.

Its the base model with only 256gb of storage.

I had hoped to reduce my photos library footprint by ticking the 'Optimise Mac Storage' option, in photos/settings, rather than 'Download originals the this Mac'

My 80gb photos library, still takes up 37gb though, even with this option ticked.

I was hoping Photos would store mostly lower-res/proxy versions, & be under 5gb, unless I actually clicked on a photo, when it would download the original.

Am I doing something wrong? Or is there a trick to shrinking the library on machines with limited storage.

Cheers

Yes even with Optimise it will use the space available as you have found. I have fallen into same trap In the past.

The solution that worked for me is to create a separate APFS volume in the same container as your Macintosh HD and give it a Quota when you create it in Disk Utility, using the ‘options’ button. If you want your iCPL to be less than 15GB make the quota (=max size) 15GB. Then delete your existing iCPL and create a new one on the new 15GB volume, obviously setting it to optimise. It is surprising how small an optimised iCPL can be. My 587GB non optimised library can be 10GB if constrained as above, maybe smaller I haven’t tried.

Sounds clunky to write out longhand but you wont notice the difference in use. The only downside is an extra drive icon on the Desktop.

EDIT Just seen @SAdProZ has already suggested this. The other option of course is put the iCPL on an external which may be too clunky for a road trip but you wouldn’t need to use Optimise at all.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

yeah fair point, I guess I could try copying some big files over & see what it does.

Ive backed up the full 80gb version to an external drive, so I might also try drilling down into the Photo's library & just delete the 'originals' folder from there, to try & trick it If to all goes wrong I can restore from backup

I’m probably a little late here but absolutely do not do this. You will damage the Photos library. macOS Catalina (iirc) changed the way the internal structure of the Photos Library operates. You really shouldn’t mess with it.