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User profile for user: PhotogWithMac
PhotogWithMac Author
User level: Level 1
45 points

Photo library does not shrink after deleting photos

Yes I know the photos I delete are moved to another folder and kept available for 30 days and so on but I went to that "recently deleted" folder and permanently deleted all photos. This library's original size was 45.12 GB and it still is 45.12 GB and all photos have been deleted. There is no reclaimed space visible in finder.


M1 silicon MB Air, MacOS 11.2.3, Photos 6.0


When I open the library package and check out the sub folder file sizes they're still huge.


Closed and opened photos. Restarted Mac. No change.



MacBook Air (2020 or later)

Posted on May 3, 2021 3:34 PM

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User profile for user: Russ New Boy
Russ New Boy
User level: Level 4
1,150 points

May 3, 2021 3:56 PM in response to PhotogWithMac

I wouldn't pay too much attention to the information Finder provides on the Photos library. It is known to be unreliable. It is not uncommon for the Modified Date to be incorrect also. If you are concerned, you can open package contents and use CMD-I to show the size of the originals folder and resources folder, that may give you more reliable information. Although, obviously do not make any changes to the files within the package otherwise you could corrupt your library.

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User profile for user: PhotogWithMac
PhotogWithMac Author
User level: Level 1
45 points

May 3, 2021 5:56 PM in response to Russ New Boy

hi Russ, thanks for having a look. Actually I did open the package contents and found that the "Originals" folder holds thousands of photos still, its size is tens of GB. So deleting photos from the library doesn't actually make the app delete most of the actual files. The library is empty though. I repeated the steps a few times and although the total size after deleting varies, the behaviour is the same.

I cross checked on my Intel MBP running Catalina and Photos 5.0 and that version behaves as expected, bringing the originals folder down to zero when deleting all photos and videos from a library.


Must be a bug...


Updating to 11.3.1 now.

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Photo library does not shrink after deleting photos

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