Hey I am wondering if someone can help-
I want to access my icloud photos on my mac, but I do not want them to take up any storage space on the macbook pro. Is there a way to do this without going to icloud.com? Is it through photos.
Thanks in advance!!
MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.14
iCloud Photo will need some storage on your Mac. You can reduce the amount of storage used on your Mac if you enable "Photos > Preferences > Optimize Mac Storage". But the Photos.app will need at least 10% to 20% of the total size of your iCloud Photos on your Mac for the optimized versions. To avoid any local copies on your Mac avoid to use Photos for Mac at all and access the photos only on www.icloud.com or create a Photos Library on an external drive. Plug this drive in, when you want to use Photos for Mac. The external drive should be prepared as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
You can use the library on the external drive without the "Optimize Storage" option and have access to your photos without an internet connection. And it will give you a local copy that you can backup to keep your photos safe. You need a backup of the iCloud Photos Library anyway.
iCloud Photo will need some storage on your Mac. You can reduce the amount of storage used on your Mac if you enable "Photos > Preferences > Optimize Mac Storage". But the Photos.app will need at least 10% to 20% of the total size of your iCloud Photos on your Mac for the optimized versions. To avoid any local copies on your Mac avoid to use Photos for Mac at all and access the photos only on www.icloud.com or create a Photos Library on an external drive. Plug this drive in, when you want to use Photos for Mac. The external drive should be prepared as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
You can use the library on the external drive without the "Optimize Storage" option and have access to your photos without an internet connection. And it will give you a local copy that you can backup to keep your photos safe. You need a backup of the iCloud Photos Library anyway.
See this article https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204264
Definitely photos will occupy space in Macintosh HD of your Mac , you can't avoid saving photos in Macintosh HD as one system photo library is needed to sync photos from iCloud server , in your Mac open system preferences > iCloud uncheck the box of photos and it will stop syncing temporarily , but what you require saving photos / occupying in Macintosh Hd is not possible as the photo application will always occupy the space , its your choice to transfer all photos to an external hard drive but that is only applied if you want to do it and iCloud photos are occupying large space .
Icloud Photos on Mac
