HT204476: Photos saves disk space by sharing images with your iPhoto or Aperture libraries

Learn about Photos saves disk space by sharing images with your iPhoto or Aperture libraries
NickAStorm

Q: How do you guys see this? Am I able to delete my "old" Aperture and iPhotos libraries?

Checked on Apple's support articles and cannot find a definitive answer. With my old libraries amounting to almost 1TB and Photos' libraries falling just short of that, I would really like to know if the old stuff can be deleted. I really need the space and would like to get control of my HD back, which is necessary on an SSD, right?

Best

Nick

iMac with Retina 5K display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)

Posted on Jul 12, 2016 10:41 PM

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Q: How do you guys see this? Am I able to delete my "old" Aperture and iPhotos libraries?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by theratter,

    theratter theratter Jul 12, 2016 10:42 PM in response to NickAStorm
    Level 4 (3,907 points)
    Desktops
    Jul 12, 2016 10:42 PM in response to NickAStorm

    You can delete them if you need to.

  • by Niel,

    Niel Niel Jul 12, 2016 10:44 PM in response to NickAStorm
    Level 10 (311,939 points)
    Jul 12, 2016 10:44 PM in response to NickAStorm

    Yes, it can, but doing so without a backup will prevent you from using the libraries in the older applications again, and it won’t free up nearly as much space as it looks like it will; the media files are hardlinked.

     

    (143428)

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Jul 12, 2016 10:53 PM in response to NickAStorm
    Level 10 (84,210 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jul 12, 2016 10:53 PM in response to NickAStorm

    There is no connection between the Aperture library and the Photos library

     

    But as the article you noted explains the old library does not use lots of space and deleting it will not save much

     

    It is up to you - it you have a good archive and it has been at least three months since you used the Aperture library then go ahead and delete it

     

    LN