Not true: Your full-resolution photos and videos stored in iCloud will not fit on this Mac

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Not true: Your full-resolution photos and videos stored in iCloud will not fit on this Mac

Hi. I upgraded to Mojave a couple of days ago.

I have 30GB of free space. I haven't suddenly taken lots of videos on my iPhone or anything like that. I haven't touched my iCloud or Photos settings. This is all on the internal drive. Yet I just received this message:

Your full-resolution photos and videos stored in iCloud will not fit on this Mac

I chose "Ignore", rather than optimise my storage, because I want all my original, full-resolution photos on my Mac, just like I always have.

What's going on?

Is it still being backed up to my Mac?

Posted on Dec 26, 2018 7:16 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

195,113 points

Dec 27, 2018 11:52 PM in response to soupisgoodfood2

"purgeable" storage is storage, that can be freed by the "Optimize Storage" feature, see: What is 'Other' and 'Purgeable' in About This Mac? - Apple Support

also: How to free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

If your Photos Library is the only storage, that is currently "optimized", and not the Desktop & Documents", then it will not help to purge items, to be able to turn off "optimize" for Photos.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

195,113 points

Dec 27, 2018 9:20 AM in response to soupisgoodfood2

You may see this message, if you temporarily disabled iCloud Photos and turn it on again.or after repairing the library or moving it.

When Photos resumes syncing with iCloud, it will estimate the required storage based on the worst case assumption, that all photos in iCloud are different from the photos on your Mac. Then it will assume, that you need as much free storage as the originals in iCloud are needing.

You wrote "I have 30GB of free space. " Is that the free space shown in the Info panel for your system drive, or is it the available storage shown in the Finder? Important is the storage that is really free. With 30GB only available you may be running out of storage.

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Answer 3

Dec 27, 2018 1:36 PM in response to léonie

Thanks. Nope. Haven't touch any iCloud or Photos settings, or moved the library, or anything like that.

That 30GB is what Finder was reporting. I deleted some stuff to free up 40GB. Still got the message.

Today, Finder and About this Mac are reporting 60GB of free space (35GB purgeable). Yet, in disk utility, MacintoshHD has only 25GB. So, that does make sense now. I'm guessing that extra 20GB overnight was from some stuff being tagged as purgeable.

But why is it not willing to dump the purgeable stuff before telling me it has no space for my photos? Surely my photos are the priority here? Or is this the new "feature" where it will consider apps from the App Store purgeable or something? *sigh*, I find this hard to follow and I'm a techie.

Oh well, I do have a 300GB Bootcamp partition I hardly use, so I'll just dump that and call it a day.

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Not true: Your full-resolution photos and videos stored in iCloud will not fit on this Mac

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