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

Ssanjose wrote: ... I don't store photos on my mac they are all in the cloud so trying to get it off my drive as it sucks up space!

First: Syndication.photoslibrary is a helper file. You can delete it if you want but, again, it will reappear later.

Second: Read léonie's message-- there's no "I don't store photos on my mac they are all in the cloud." Photos doesn't work like that. iCloud Photos is not a method for off-site storage-- it's for synchronization.

Third: Also as léonie points out, many of us use an external drive.

Next: If you choose "Optimize Storage" in System Settings>iCloud, then Photos will keep only smaller versions of pictures locally, and it will rely on iCloud to retrieve full copies when you need them. This can save 80%-90% of the storage space for the Photos Library.

This seems to be an image storage folder from Messages. All images in messages gets dumped into this Syndication.photoslibrary. For some reason, Apple has also decided that you can not delete unused/unwanted photos in this library. And, although you can delete the library, Apple will simply again regenerate and restore all the messages images into the recreated library. Simply try and delete an individual image in this library...impossible to do. I spent hours with a senior Apple tech and they too could not figure out how to delete images and said unless I wanted to delete all message, this would not go away!

Are you asking about Photos on a Mac or on a mobile device?

The Photos.app needs a local copy of the iCloud Photos Library, on any device that is syncing with iCloud Photos. The main purpose of iCloud Photos is to keep the local copies of the Photos libraries identical and perfectly in sync with the library in iCloud of all your devices.

On a Mac you can move the Photos Library to an external drive, but it needs a wired connection, you cannot use a network volume. Prepare the external drive as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

And you need to move the complete library, the Photos Library.photoslibrary package, not just some of the internal folders, or the library may no longer work.

If you move it, Photos will just recreate it in the same place.