mgstraub

Q: In Photos 2.0, Optimize Mac Storage is enabled but Photos will not free up hard drive space

I recently transferred about 90GB of photos into Mac Photos 2.0 (macOS 10.12 Sierra), and even with Optimize Mac Storage selected Photos will not free up hard drive space. In fact, my hard drive space has been very slowly decreasing, while my Mac Storage indicator says my Photos Library is slowly growing.

 

The only thing I can think of that might be preventing Photos from uploading my photos and not physically removing them from my Mac hard drive is that Photos is still scanning faces for the People tab. However, all uploading has completed.

 

Shouldn't most of these photos be being removed from my HD then to free up space?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 2, 2016 5:16 PM

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Q: In Photos 2.0, Optimize Mac Storage is enabled but Photos will not free up hard drive space

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  • Helpful answers

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Oct 2, 2016 5:34 PM in response to mgstraub
    Level 10 (85,414 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 2, 2016 5:34 PM in response to mgstraub

    How big is your Photos librry and how much free space do you have?

     

    With optimized photos nothing is removed but the originals are replaces with smaller versions and the full sized versions are downloaded when needed - it is a dym=namic process and no optimization takes place until space is needed

     

    My gues with very imited detail is that things are working fine and that over time everything will stabilize and be just great

     

    LN

  • by mgstraub,

    mgstraub mgstraub Oct 2, 2016 5:50 PM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 2, 2016 5:50 PM in response to LarryHN

    Thanks for your help! My Photos library is currently 97.09 GB and right now I'm down to 1.92GB of free space, so Photos has stopped syncing.

     

    Last week, the Mac Storage about bar indicated that I had about 60GB of "Purgeable" content, which I assumed to be most of my Photos Library. However, no such purgeable indicator exists anymore.

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Oct 2, 2016 5:53 PM in response to mgstraub
    Level 10 (85,414 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 2, 2016 5:53 PM in response to mgstraub

    That is an issue - 2 GB is not enough free space - is that still going down, stable or increasing now?

     

    LN

  • by mgstraub,

    mgstraub mgstraub Oct 2, 2016 6:25 PM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 2, 2016 6:25 PM in response to LarryHN

    Still going down. :/

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Oct 2, 2016 7:13 PM in response to mgstraub
    Level 10 (85,414 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 2, 2016 7:13 PM in response to mgstraub

    do you have an external hard drive yu can offload some large files to to let Photos finish and stabilize?

     

    LN

  • by mgstraub,

    mgstraub mgstraub Oct 3, 2016 9:18 AM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 3, 2016 9:18 AM in response to LarryHN

    I do, and I offloaded 66GB of stuff to an external hard drive. I checked the Photos People album last night and it said "Photos will continue to scan your remaining 10,098 when you're not using the app…" Had 66.69 GB of free space. Left my Mac running overnight without going to sleep. This morning There are still 10,095 photos left to be scanned, and I'm down to 63.84GB available, but 1.97GB is "purgeable" again.

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Oct 3, 2016 9:22 AM in response to mgstraub
    Level 10 (85,414 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 3, 2016 9:22 AM in response to mgstraub

    the numbers are wonky until it completes the first scan - I ignore them

     

    LN