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How can I use the Photos app as a passthrough to the cloud instead of storing all photos locally?

S

Saurus504

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 14, 2015
72
13
Just switched over to a new macbook from an iMac. I really liked how the iCloud photo library automatically organizes and uploads everything to the cloud as i import from my phone. But..the problem is...I only have 250GB of space locally. I have the 500GB cloud storage option specifically to be able to hold all my pics and vids so the space on my macbook wouldn't immediately get filled up.
I know there's an option to where you can set to where the cloud only stores pics locally if theres enough space...which I guess might be the option I'll have to go with. But I just really don't want to be crunched for space right off the bat.

Thoughts/suggestions/insight?

I'd really appreciate the help because I've got about 4 years of pics including everything from wedding, our son being born, etc. I can't afford to lose.

Thanks!
 
Saurus504 said:
Just switched over to a new macbook from an iMac. I really liked how the iCloud photo library automatically organizes and uploads everything to the cloud as i import from my phone. But..the problem is...I only have 250GB of space locally. I have the 500GB cloud storage option specifically to be able to hold all my pics and vids so the space on my macbook wouldn't immediately get filled up.
I know there's an option to where you can set to where the cloud only stores pics locally if theres enough space...which I guess might be the option I'll have to go with. But I just really don't want to be crunched for space right off the bat.

Thoughts/suggestions/insight?

I'd really appreciate the help because I've got about 4 years of pics including everything from wedding, our son being born, etc. I can't afford to lose.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Screen Shot 2015-08-01 at 2.07.37 AM.png

Unless I misunderstood your requirements, you answered your own question? Just have Optimise Mac Storage checked and you're all set.
 
hojx said:
View attachment 572197
Unless I misunderstood your requirements, you answered your own question? Just have Optimise Mac Storage checked and you're all set.
Click to expand...
That's actually what I'm doing right now and seems to be taking up not much space at all thankfully...even though I know this is well over 100GB of pics/vids, it seems to have only taken up about 41GB so far and it doesn't have much left to download. I was hoping to not use any storage up and have it all in the cloud...but this will do for now!

But if you technically have enough storage space but still don't want to store your pictures in Photos, how do you do that and still use the Photos app?

I'd still definitely like to know the answer to this question though.
 
Saurus504 said:
That's actually what I'm doing right now and seems to be taking up not much space at all thankfully...even though I know this is well over 100GB of pics/vids, it seems to have only taken up about 41GB so far and it doesn't have much left to download. I was hoping to not use any storage up and have it all in the cloud...but this will do for now!

But if you technically have enough storage space but still don't want to store your pictures in Photos, how do you do that and still use the Photos app?

I'd still definitely like to know the answer to this question though.
Click to expand...

The answer is that it's not possible unless you run out of space and have optimised turned on.
Maybe you could change the photo library location to an external HD or pen drive. Not sure that would work tho
 
crashoverride77 said:
The answer is that it's not possible unless you run out of space and have optimised turned on.
Maybe you could change the photo library location to an external HD or pen drive. Not sure that would work tho
Click to expand...

I think you're correct. It's gonna store them if the space is there, so storing the Photos library on an external drive is the only way to keep them off of a hard drive that isn't very low on space.
 
Saurus504 said:
That's actually what I'm doing right now and seems to be taking up not much space at all thankfully...even though I know this is well over 100GB of pics/vids, it seems to have only taken up about 41GB so far and it doesn't have much left to download. I was hoping to not use any storage up and have it all in the cloud...but this will do for now!

But if you technically have enough storage space but still don't want to store your pictures in Photos, how do you do that and still use the Photos app?

I'd still definitely like to know the answer to this question though.
Click to expand...

You technically could after uploading everything (double check that it is indeed uploaded from iCloud.com or iOS Photos):
  1. Switch off iCloud Photo Library on your Mac
  2. Clear your Photos library
  3. Switch iCloud Photo Library back on with 'Optimise Mac Storage'.
That way only thumbnails are downloaded until you decide to either click into a photo (triggering a full-sized download) or upload more stuff.
 
rwilliams said:
I think you're correct. It's gonna store them if the space is there, so storing the Photos library on an external drive is the only way to keep them off of a hard drive that isn't very low on space.
Click to expand...

Yeah, defiantly worth a try.
I actually like having them always on my Mac, sort of acts as another backup basically and you can without Internet.
 
I don't mind them taking up the space really. What I'm really curious about is what happens when I get close to being full? Is it going to randomly delete the local copies of pics/vids to make space as I fill up the hard drive with other items? I'm just really worried about getting to the 250 pretty quick and then constantly having to undo and redo the cloud library to make space. I'm really praying it's all going to work automatically in the background magically without much maneuvering from me.

Plus I do have the 500GB of cloud space...so I will still have room there for docs and whatnot.
 
Saurus504 said:
I don't mind them taking up the space really. What I'm really curious about is what happens when I get close to being full? Is it going to randomly delete the local copies of pics/vids to make space as I fill up the hard drive with other items? I'm just really worried about getting to the 250 pretty quick and then constantly having to undo and redo the cloud library to make space. I'm really praying it's all going to work automatically in the background magically without much maneuvering from me.

Plus I do have the 500GB of cloud space...so I will still have room there for docs and whatnot.
Click to expand...

It will work automatically, similar to iOS. It will most likely start deleting older pictures first before deleting newer ones or recently viewed ones. Don't worry about it.
 
I'm in the same situation as you, with a library a bit larger than yours and Photos just trimmed its used space to just under 30 GB when I was running out of space (around the 200 GB used mark). I'm amazed at the speed at which originals were fetched from the cloud when I needed them (to edit/share). Took no longer than 3 seconds on a 40mbit connection (in Argentina) to download a 6 MB file.
 
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