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Photos

I recently uploaded all my photos on my MacBook Pro to my iCloud storage. Is there a way to delete them from my MacBook and keep them in the cloud?


MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jul 21, 2020 8:46 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 22, 2020 9:43 AM

No. The iCloud Library is just a syncing service not an off computer storage facility. Any changes you make to the local library, deletions, additions or edits, will be duplicated in the iCloud library.


3 replies

Jul 22, 2020 10:02 AM in response to TGTIA

You can save quite a lot of storage, if you enable "Optimise Mac Storage" in the Photos > Preferences > iCloud. If you do that, Photos will automatically remove some of the big resolution original image files, if storage is needed for other applications. It is fully automatic, and the size of the library can shrink over time down to 10% of the original size. But do not delete any photos that you want to keep.


Photos

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