Hi everyone
I noticed that photos was taking up space on my Mac, so I decided to turn off the iCloud photos for my mac since I don't use it anyway and I mainly use my phone and ipad to look at my photos. However, after turning it off I saw that my photo library is still showing up on my mac even after I turned off the cloud and it's still taking up space.
Does anyone know how I can fix this? Thanks!
MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 14.4
Turning off iCloud Photos deletes the photos from iCloud (after 30 days), not from your Mac. If you want to delete them from your Mac, go into the Photos app and delete them. To actually free up the space, you must delete the photos from the Recently Deleted folder. Also, note that if you delete photos in Albums, they remain in your Library. You can only delete them from the Library.
Delete photos and videos or recover deleted ones on Mac - Apple Support
I will also point out that the idea behind iCloud Photos is with that enabled, your images are stored on iCloud and your Mac can only store the most recent images if you are short on space, as stated in System Settings > Storage:
Turning off iCloud Photos deletes the photos from iCloud (after 30 days), not from your Mac. If you want to delete them from your Mac, go into the Photos app and delete them. To actually free up the space, you must delete the photos from the Recently Deleted folder. Also, note that if you delete photos in Albums, they remain in your Library. You can only delete them from the Library.
Delete photos and videos or recover deleted ones on Mac - Apple Support
I will also point out that the idea behind iCloud Photos is with that enabled, your images are stored on iCloud and your Mac can only store the most recent images if you are short on space, as stated in System Settings > Storage:
Photos taking up space on Mac
