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Berliquet Author

Level 1

4 points

Photo library local storage

Hello.

I just started macbook life, and learning now.

I using icloud to save my photos.

But I found my photo library taken many size of my macbook storage(around 11GB)

I know icloud is online storage not local storage and all my photo is uploaded in icloud.

It is already set Mac storage Optimization and I;m not download my photos.

But it taken large size of storage.

I want to just show photo online storage and just download photo what I want.

And I want to reduce or limit photo library size.

Is there any solution?

MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Apr 17, 2020 10:51 AM

Top-ranking reply

Old Toad

Level 10

210,615 points

Posted on Apr 17, 2020 4:36 PM

iCloud Library is not an off-computer storage facility. It's a syncing feature that lets all devices using the same Apple ID and have iCloud library enabled to have the same photos on each device.

If you enable "Optimize Mac Storage" in the library when the available free space gets down to around 20% (not sure about that figure) optimized versions of the original image files will begin to be used.

Otherwise you an use an portable external SSD to house your full library and have a smaller library on your MacBook with your favorites and most recent photos or whatever. You can keep the external library updated with the paid version of PowerPhotos which can copy albums between libraries along with keywords and other metadata.

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Photo library local storage

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