How can I find the photos in my Phots.app which are not copied to photolibrary file on my Mac?

Question

Level 1

8 points

How can I find the photos in my Phots.app which are not copied to photolibrary file on my Mac?

I realized that some of my photo files which I used to import to Photos.app without checking on the box for "Copy items to the Photos library." I am assuming that this past setting causes the situation where some of the photos have not been uploaded to iCloud photos.

I would like to know how to look up the photo files in my Photos.app not copied to its photo library file on my Mac mini.

What I am trying to do now:

To integrate all of my photo files into iCloud photos

To increase file storage capacity of Mac mini by using the optimization function of iCloud

Specification of my system:

Mac mini: 2018

OSX: Catalina ver. 10.15.4

Photos.app: ver. 5.0 (141.19.150)

iCloud storage: 2TB (1.69 TB Available) 2TB storage plan subscribed

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Apr 24, 2020 7:24 PM

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Answer 1

Joseph_S.

Community Specialist

Apr 26, 2020 2:58 PM in response to takeharutaro

Greetings takeharutaro,

Thanks for visiting the Apple Support Communities! I understand you'd like to locate the photos that are viewable in the Photos app on your Mac, but are outside of the Photos library, as you'd like to have these photos upload to iCloud Photos.

You can locate a photo file by selecting one of the photos in the Photos app that is not in your Photos library, and then choosing File > Show Referenced File in Finder. After you locate the file, you can copy the file to the Photos library, or choose File > Consolidate. That will then have the photo upload to iCloud if you have iCloud Photos turned on. You can see those steps outlined in the following article: Change where your files are stored in Photos on Mac - Apple Support

You can see further information for using iCloud Photos with Optimize Storage from the following article: Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support

Cheers.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

197,809 points

Apr 27, 2020 7:39 AM in response to takeharutaro

I would like to know how to look up the photo files in my Photos.app not copied to its photo library file on my Mac mini.

To find all photos in one place, that have not been copied into your Photos Library you can do two things:

Enable the badge overlays, so all thumbnails of the referenced photos will be showing a tiny arrow as. a badge. This is done in the View menu: View > Metadata > Referenced File.
Create a smart album:
- File > New Smart Album
- Set the rule to "Photo is referenced".

This album will be showing only items that have not been copied into the library.

You can consolidate them all at once, if you select all photos in this smart album with ⌘A and then use the command "File > Consolidate". Hopefully, all original image files are still there.

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