Why do I have multiple versions of Photos libraries?

I noticed I have the following in ~/Pictures directory - why do i have multiple copies of my Photos/iPhoto libraries? Am I wasting enormous amounts of space? I have around 80K photos when I open Photos app. I just bought a 2TB 15" MacBook Air because I maxed out 1TB on previous laptop - a Mid-2010 13" MacBook Pro so it was time for an upgrade anyways. Hard to tell what are real photos files and what are hard/symbol links to the files.


-rw-r--r--@  1 kris  staff  8196 Mar 14 09:58 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x@ 24 kris  staff   768 Mar 14 09:54 Photos Library.photoslibrary
drwxr-xr-x+ 29 kris  staff   928 Mar 13 11:29 ..
drwx------+  9 kris  staff   288 Mar 12 21:40 .
-rw-r--r--   1 root  staff     0 Mar 12 21:40 .localized
drwxr-xr-x@ 21 kris  staff   672 Mar  6 21:23 iPhoto Library.photoslibrary
drwxr-xr-x   2 kris  staff    64 Jul 21  2020 FastFoto
drwxr-xr-x   7 kris  staff   224 Jun 15  2020 Photo Booth Library
drwxr-xr-x@ 27 kris  staff   864 Sep 25  2019 iPhoto Library.migratedphotolibrary


If I go into "Photos" app and ctrl-a to select all photos/videos and then hit the little info button, it says all my photos/videos are ~485GB so not sure why my 1TB disk on my old laptop was full?

MacBook Air (M3, 2024)

Posted on Mar 14, 2024 7:10 AM

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Mar 18, 2024 9:14 PM in response to David Carlin

The directory listing you supplied shows three libraries: one old original iPhoto library that has already been migrated to Photos format and has been unchanged in over three years, a library with a name suggesting that it was the result of converting that old iPhoto library into Photos format but with updates as recent as March 6, and another library with a name suggesting that it was created directly as a Photos library.


The migration process that I infer from the names would have resulted in the two libraries with "iPhoto" in the name sharing disk space for the original photo files by hard links for the migrated photos, but other portions of the libraries such as index files would be separate. Any photos added to the resulting library would, of course, increase its size.


We have no way for us to tell from a distance which of the .photoslibrary files you are looking at when you have Photos open and do the size check you mention, but you can check by opening Photos > Settings > General and examining Library Location. Which file name does it include?


Given the file dates in the directory list you supplied, you must have used both of the .photoslibrary files this month, but you could only have been looking at one of them at the time you check its size. You should repeat the process with the other library open.


Only you can decide whether you need both .photoslibrary libraries, or how you came to have two of them. You may need to merge them if they don't contain the same photos.


Similarly, only you can decide whether your migration of the old iPhoto library was thorough enough to make "iPhoto Library.migratedphotolibrary" unnecessary.

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Why do I have multiple versions of Photos libraries?

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