I have multiple devices MacBook Air, new iPad Air and two older iPads and a iPhone 8+ and pay for extra iCloud storage 200GB. My photos appear on all my devices as well as being stored in the cloud and now I have insufficient storage on my MacBook Air to continue working. This appears to be ridiculous and I want to know how to fix it. Thank you all.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15
You may wish to optimize photos and documents on your MacBook to free up space.
In Photos:
go to photos > preferences > iCloud and optimize Mac storage
For iCloud:
System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud > Optimize Mac Storage
Hi Muguy.
I have done both of these steps, however it appears that the photos whilst also being in iCloud, also remain on each of the devices that taking up valuable storage space. In fact, these and the ever-increasing size of software updates means that apart from interfering with my work, there is sufficient storage space for the latest updates. I also have two seperate large hard drives however don't seem to be able to bulk offload photos to free up space.
Correct. Anything in iCloud still remains on your device. You can easily offload your photos to an external drive and remove them from iCloud. Either by turning off iCloud as a service or by creating a new system library (hold OPTION while opening photos). Yourold library can be offloaded and your new library used as a system library and still sync with iCloud.
Storage and iCloud
