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Delete photos from MacBook

Can I delete photos from my MacBook but keep them on my iPhone and in the iCloud?

MacBook Air 13″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Jun 9, 2020 9:28 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 9, 2020 10:44 PM

The only way to delete photos from your Library, but keeping them in iCloud would be to disable iCloud Photos on your Mac.

Then you can delete photos from in Photos on your Mac and they will stay in iCloud. But you can no longer access the photos in iCloud from your Mac using the Photos.app on your Mac. It would be highly inconvenient. I cannot recommend to do that.


Tt would be better to enable "Optimise Mac Storage" in the Photos Preferences > iCloud. Then you can save some storage, because Photos will remove high resolution originals, the depth map of portrait photos, the video components of Live Photos automatically, when your are low on storage on your MacBook Air.


2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 9, 2020 10:44 PM in response to colrohm

The only way to delete photos from your Library, but keeping them in iCloud would be to disable iCloud Photos on your Mac.

Then you can delete photos from in Photos on your Mac and they will stay in iCloud. But you can no longer access the photos in iCloud from your Mac using the Photos.app on your Mac. It would be highly inconvenient. I cannot recommend to do that.


Tt would be better to enable "Optimise Mac Storage" in the Photos Preferences > iCloud. Then you can save some storage, because Photos will remove high resolution originals, the depth map of portrait photos, the video components of Live Photos automatically, when your are low on storage on your MacBook Air.


Delete photos from MacBook

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