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Q: Moving the Photos.app library?

So the default location for the Photos library is: ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary.

 

I'm using a solid state drive that doesn't have much space.  Any idea how I can change this library location to a different hard drive?

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Apr 8, 2015 1:51 PM

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Q: Moving the Photos.app library?

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  • by jdruding,

    jdruding jdruding Dec 3, 2015 3:07 PM in response to tah18@mac.com
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    Dec 3, 2015 3:07 PM in response to tah18@mac.com

    I had the exact problem you had and I have the answer!  Just got off the phone with Apple support.  To get around having to upgrade your iCloud storage (or being totally stuck if you have the 1 TB plan like I do) Do the following:

     

    1. Go to system preferences and log out of icloud
    2. Reboot
    3. Go back to system preferences, log back into iCloud, then click to sync photos, click options and select iCloud library. It will appear to do the same thing again, but instead of error saying you won't have enough space in iCloud, it will instead say you may not have enough space and it will let you continue without having to upgrade.
    4. Then launch photos and it will jump right to the "Preparing" step, which is where it compares what is local to what is in the cloud. When that completes only the delta changes will occur
    5. Done!
  • by jdruding,

    jdruding jdruding Dec 4, 2015 7:30 AM in response to jdruding
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    Dec 4, 2015 7:30 AM in response to jdruding

    I need to revise my enthusiasm for this fix a bit.  While it does appear to work and get those of us with a greater than 500GB library out of a problem that didn't seem to be fixable otherwise, after it does the preparing step, it moves on to uploading, and, even though it doesn't actually appear to be really uploading anything (my iCloud storage has not been changing), it looks like it is going to be doing this step for a long time (days to weeks, just like the initial upload).  The good news, i suppose, is that I still have my online iCloud library available to my other devices while this is occurring.

  • by eatpizza,

    eatpizza eatpizza Dec 13, 2015 10:44 PM in response to jdruding
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    Dec 13, 2015 10:44 PM in response to jdruding

    I also just wanted to move the library to an external drive, so I copied it there and after preparing it moved into uploading. But all was already in iCloud so I stopped it and read this. Doesn't make any sense to upload all again.

     

    Any luck with this?

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Dec 14, 2015 2:52 AM in response to eatpizza
    Level 10 (107,827 points)
    iCloud
    Dec 14, 2015 2:52 AM in response to eatpizza

    But all was already in iCloud so I stopped it and read this. Doesn't make any sense to upload all again.

     

    Any luck with this?

    If you move the library to a different drive, Photos will treat it as a new library and upload again to iCloud to compare the library to the one in iCloud and merge missing items into your iCloud Photo Library. That may take several days for a large library.  Yo cannot avoid this step.

  • by eatpizza,

    eatpizza eatpizza Dec 14, 2015 3:03 AM in response to léonie
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    Dec 14, 2015 3:03 AM in response to léonie

    Thanks for your reply.

    upload again to iCloud to compare the library to the one in iCloud and merge missing items

     

    Sounds like it tries to do that. Still it makes no sense in my opinion. The media data should have a db like file, or metadata or whatever schema and compare the metada and not comparing the raw files. And upload only those that do not match. If that's not the way it goes then there's a big bug in the behaviour of this.

     

    The next thing I want to try is treat this as if it was a complete new library. Meaning creating a new one in the external drive, I imagine that in that case iCloud will decide that it needs to download the media to the hard drive, not upload anything, so it should be much faster than the uploading way.

     

    Not sure if anyone tried that way.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Dec 14, 2015 3:09 AM in response to eatpizza
    Level 10 (107,827 points)
    iCloud
    Dec 14, 2015 3:09 AM in response to eatpizza
    I imagine that in that case iCloud will decide that it needs to download the media to the hard drive, not upload anything, so it should be much faster than the uploading way.

    If you do that, it will be like downloading on a different Mac.  You are right, Photos will download all photos from iCloud Photo Library, but that requires that you wait, until the upload is complete. There should be no progress bar in the iCloud panel.

    And if you have named faces you will lose the faces thumbnails. They do not download from iCloud Photo Library.  Also the projects (books, cards, calendars) will be lost.   Use Photos and iCloud Photo Library on multiple Mac computers - Apple Support

  • by eatpizza,

    eatpizza eatpizza Dec 14, 2015 3:16 AM in response to léonie
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    Dec 14, 2015 3:16 AM in response to léonie

    léonie wrote:

    but that requires that you wait, until the upload is complete.

     

    Well, the upload was already completed in iCloud when I transfered my old iPhoto library to the new Photo app and started using iCloud.

    I already had to wait for days to upload it the first time.

     

    I can live without the faces, albums and so.

    Lets see how it goes. I can report here also.

  • by eatpizza,

    eatpizza eatpizza Dec 15, 2015 6:06 AM in response to eatpizza
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 15, 2015 6:06 AM in response to eatpizza

    Yep, so I ended up just creating a new library on the external disk.

    Its size is now half of what I had on disk, which came from the old iPhoto library.

    Took a few hours to download from iCloud but way less than uploading the same stuff.

     

    Now I can delete the one from the computer and get 70GB of space back.

  • by mike0416,

    mike0416 mike0416 Feb 11, 2016 5:19 PM in response to jdruding
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 11, 2016 5:19 PM in response to jdruding

    This worked great for me, but my library was only 150 GB.  Good advice.

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