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How to actually delete images from your mac using Photo app

As everybody knows Mac is godawful when it comes to viewing images. From "press space bar to actually play .gif animation" to "you cant use arrow keys to move from one image to another".


So I tried to us Photos app and turns out deleting images from its interface does not delete them from original place on disk-drive. Can anyone say how to do it or is it even possible?


  1. I imported a folder from Desktop and put another one directly into system's "Pictures" folder too.
  2. Photo app sees them, allows to browse.
  3. I click delete on image. It get into "Recently deleted".
  4. Gets me the button to "Delete forever" in the menu, so its not the "You delete from album, and not from library" - problem.
  5. I click the button or click cmd+Backspace, image gets "deleted".
  6. I open the folder from when it was imported. Its still there.


So does Photo app just creates duplicates of everything you import into it and then allows you to only delete those duplicates?

Posted on Nov 11, 2023 7:06 PM

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Posted on Nov 12, 2023 1:52 AM

Photos has two ways of importing images. It will depend on your Photos > Settings for importing.

The default way of importing is to copy the image files into your Photos Library. Photos will only manage files you have imported. If you change the Settings, so Photos will not copy the image files into your Photos Library, Photos will just reference the files you imported in their original location and not manage them at all, because they could be used by other apps as well. Then you will be responsible for managing the originals. I cannot recommend to use Photos this way. Having Photos copy the images into the library is the best way to use it. See: Where are the photos I imported?


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Question marked as Best reply

Nov 12, 2023 1:52 AM in response to whyrawr

Photos has two ways of importing images. It will depend on your Photos > Settings for importing.

The default way of importing is to copy the image files into your Photos Library. Photos will only manage files you have imported. If you change the Settings, so Photos will not copy the image files into your Photos Library, Photos will just reference the files you imported in their original location and not manage them at all, because they could be used by other apps as well. Then you will be responsible for managing the originals. I cannot recommend to use Photos this way. Having Photos copy the images into the library is the best way to use it. See: Where are the photos I imported?


Nov 12, 2023 1:03 AM in response to whyrawr

I open the folder from when it was imported. Its still there.


Photos only manages images copied to its database. It would never touch images without the db, and that's to protect you from accidental deletions.


I suspect Photos is not the app for you if you find tapping the space bar to view an image as "godawful". And you can use the arrow keys to move from one image to another in the Finder.

Nov 20, 2023 7:13 PM in response to Yer_Man

Hello, thanks for answer. Tho OS still has a trashbin folder, so accidental deletion is not a problem. But necessity to create duplicates in separate app in order to just get through photos/images I collected on desktop sounds bad.


It doesnt help that double-click on images opens "Viewer" and that one doesnt allow to use arrows. It also opens .gifs as set of images instead of, well, .gif animation.


And then you as a user try to use separate tool - spacebar. So that you can view .gifs and use arrow keys. But the spacebar viewer is stupid and cant separate images from documents, apps, folders so you just hop on and off from images to random stuff.


And then when I go and try to get a basic user experience of just clicking on images and browsing them, it turns out I need to create duplicates in separate app and then delete the source images and go browse dups. Which has a lot higher potential of accidental deletion.


As I sadly said - godawful.

Nov 21, 2023 1:10 AM in response to whyrawr

You seem confused.


But necessity to create duplicates in separate app in order to just get through photos/images I collected on desktop sounds bad.


It would if it were necessary. But it's not. It sure sounds like what you want is a simple photo viewer, not a media manager for photographs, and if this is the case, why don't you use one? Photos is a database driven media manager with non-destructive parametric editing. Complaining that this is not a simple photo viewer is to misunderstand what the app is and what it is for.


It doesnt help that double-click on images opens "Viewer"


Do you mean Preview? Again, not a simple photo viewer.


And then you as a user try to use separate tool - spacebar. So that you can view .gifs and use arrow keys. But the spacebar viewer is stupid and cant separate images from documents, apps, folders so you just hop on and off from images to random stuff.


Just a wild thought, but in that folder with all that mixed up stuff, have you considered sorting it on Kind?


And then when I go and try to get a basic user experience of just clicking on images and browsing them, it turns out I need to create duplicates in separate app and then delete the source images and go browse dups. Which has a lot higher potential of accidental deletion.


Then perhaps you need to set something other than Photos.app as the default app for viewing your photographs. Have you tried that?

How to actually delete images from your mac using Photo app

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