Actual Available Space After Enabling "Optimize Mac Storage" for iCloud Photos

Hi

It can take time for the full size originals to be deleted from your mac (typically only when your mac runs low on space). But unfortunately, this means your mac still looks full (there is no account taken in the storage reporting).

You can force it by syncing your iCloud library to a new empty library. See this user tip from Leonie.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250002222

Also think about backup for your photos. With optimised storage you cannot backup from your mac easily, since your masters are not stored on your mac. This user tip offers a solution:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250001961

philfnyc1 wrote:

My available storage went from 100 GB to 372.41 GB available storage. Yet its reporting 246.93 GB utilized by Photos. I clicked [Manage...] and manually summed the space utilized by each kind of file. The sum was around 130 GB available.

...

When I enabled optimization, I thought macOS would remove images that weren't viewed or edited for a certain period of time. Does this mean macOS will offload files when space is needed? And because it can do this, is the space utilized by Photos Library not included in the available storage amount?

Thanks

Tony already explained how it is supposed to work. Just a few more thoughts on the "optimise" procedure. It is really fully automatic and Photos is trying to save bandwidth and repeated downloads and keep as many photos as possible downloaded for fast and easy access. It will not remove recently used photos needlessly, as it would make Photos slow and create additional cost for repeated downloads.

Not all storage used by Photos can be made "available". Only original image files, the depth maps of Portrait Mode Photos, the video components of Life Photos can be optimised. Even a fully optimised library may still have 25% of the size of the full library in iCloud, as Photos needs some storage for the optimised versions and other working copies. A fully optimised library can be painfully slow and not much fun, if we are having a lot Portrait Mode photos, Live Photos videos, because we will spend a lot of time waiting for the downloads and the animations coning to live.

I would keep a backup copy of your current library (not optimised) on an external volume, in addition to your Time Machine backups. Time Machine backups are great, but we have to restore the complete library to be able to recover a single photo from the backup. A separate copy of the full library will give us immediate access. And I would also keep backup copies of all original image files - at least, if your mc is currently running macOS 10.15 or later. The recent versions of Photos are no longer storing our original image files unmodified in the library package. The files have been renamed, and only Photos can find a particular file based on the filename. I am backing up each original image file independent of Photos, before I import them to Photos.

No, metadata is retained. And the file names are retained in the database, so if you export an unmodified original, you get back the file exactly as when you imported it, including the filename.

But in the actual library folder where the original files are stored, they are renamed. Only the database retains the link between the renamed file and the original filename.

The main consequence is you can’t recover your original files by opening the library package and dragging them out of the originals/masters folder.

TonyCollinet wrote:

The main consequence is you can’t recover your original files by opening the library package and dragging them out of the originals/masters folder.

Which means, we need to be able to run Photos, and Photos needs to be able to open the library, if we want together the original image files back in their original state. We will be stuck, if we have to downgrade to an older system version, if the library is badly corrupted, or if we no longer have a Mac at all, because we want to switch to different computer model for some reason.

The original file creation dates may also be lost, particularly, if we are using iCloud Photos. This matters mainly for videos, which do not have an embedded capture date.