Syndication.photoslibrary: What is it and can I move it to external hard drive?

I've never hear of that before. But I have one here:

I opened it and mine is empty. I delete it and reopen one of my other libraries and it was recreated in the same location but at 2.2 MB instead of 70.6 MB. So you might close Photos, move the Syndication.photoslibrary to the Trash and then open your primary library again. Then check to see what size the new Syndication.photoslibrary is. It might grow as you work with Photos. If all is well you can empty the Trash bin.

Just found your post as found a 20Gb library on my system drive. I had a look in the package and under /Users/yourname/Library/Photos/Libraries/Syndication.photoslibrary/scopes/syndication there were a bunch of numbered sub folders. Inside were mostly video files. When I looked at them they were primarily from videos sent or received on the Messages app.

So would guess if you delete files from Messages you will clear space. I would guess safer to delete from the Messages app than delete from the system folder but happy to take advice on this.

It sounds like the Syndication.photoslibrary is your primary, System Photo Library, the is being used for all of your photos. You can verify that by holding down the Option key and launching Photos. In the "Choose Library" window see what library, if more than one, is set to the System Photo Library:

You can move that library to an external drive as long as the drive is formatted as shown in this screenshot depending on what type of drive it is:

Any other type of format will render the library unusable.

Be sure to open the library and make sure it's working as expected before deleting from the internal boot drive.

I've never seen the Syndication.photoslibrary, though I have found that I do have one in my users library/Photos/Libraries-- in fact, it's the only thing there. I copied it to my desktop, and it opens in Photos. It seems to have iPhone and iPad pictures in it, but they should all be on those devices or in iCloud.

I'm guessing that Photos automatically produces this library for its own use. And if you delete it, it probably won't hurt. but I'll bet Photos will just make another one for whatever reason it made the first one.

I deleted mine, but I kept the copy on the desktop. It hasn't reappeared, yet, and it doesn't seem to matter, yet...

Update: It did reappear when I launched my System Library. It has no pictures in it---yet.

I turn off my iCloud syncing from time to time, and I wonder if this file has only the pictures if finds since then. My System Library has 14.2K, and this originally had 1.4K.

Even though I've opened two such photoslibraries, PowerPhotos doesn't acknowledge them.

Have you tried opening that library?

Do you have a current and full backup of your boot data drive? If you do what I would do is delete the Syndication.photoslibrary file, reboot and see what happens.

I started daisy disk yesterday and analyzed my macOS disk of my 2018 MacBook Pro. And there it was: my 14,2 GB syndication.photoslibrary file. In addition to my 64,28 GB "photos library.photoslibrary" file.

A quick google on the syndication file and here I am with the same question. Funny that nobody seems to have a short and simple answer to this. :)

I have one and it's ~40GB. A big space hog.

I'm wondering if it's related to the new iCloud Shared Library feature.

It's disappointing how useless these apple forums are. It would be nice if Apple Engineers showed up in here and answered questions once in a while.

I did ask the same question about Syndication.photoslibrary at the Feedback site. But they don't respond personally to Feedback. Nor is it tech support. They just want product feedback.

If you have a bug, you can submit it to bug report. And I may at some point. But I don't know there is a bug here. I'm looking for under-the-hood intel on what this is used for, whether it's a problem that it's so large, etc.

And if you mean go to the Apple Photos Feedback link to tell them their engineers should show up in the forums and help out, that's not what that link is for.

OT-- you might see that in an earlier post I described what happens...

Tell Apple yourself via Feedback - Photos - Apple

Oops-- How did this post pop up again? See my earlier post way down the list for help...