I have my photos on my MacBook Air optimized for iCloud photos but its taking up over 150gb on my harddrive
How can I save more space on my hard drive when I already have it optimized?
MacBook Air (2020 or later)
Question marked as
Best reply
Even an optimised library may take up at least ten percent of the original size of the library, as as Photos needs to store at least the optimised versions plus some databases, the shared albums, the faces etc.
And Photos will only optimise some of the photos, whenever you need additional free storage. You can force Photos to optimise the library fully by downloading a fresh copy from iCloud by starting over with an empty library. Initially it will be fully optimised. See: How to force Photos for Mac to Optimise the Storage Immediately