How can I manage my photo library more effectively on my mac? I have the setting turned on to optimize my storage but my photos/videos are still using over 150 gigabytes of storage, whereas on my phone the same photos and videos are only using 4-5 gigabytes. How can I fix this to hopefully have a similar result on my Macbook air?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.7
How large is the library in iCloud?
Your optimized photo library on the iPhone is also smaller on the Mac, because the display is smaller and the optimized versions on the iPhone can be smaller. Also Photos for Mac needs a bit more storage for working copies because it can do more than the than Photos for iOS, for example create smart albums. And the sandboxes for third party editors are stored inside the Photos Library package.When I let the Mac optimize the library fully by downloading a fresh copy of the library from iCloud (as described in the post by G0lfPr0_28, the library will temporarily shrink down to roughly 20% of the size in iCloud, but no less, because only the full size originals can be get rid off, but not the cached working copies for browsing and the internal databases, describing the albums and other relations between images.
Hi there.
The discrepancy happens because macOS keeps full-size files until your laptop is almost out of space, while your iPhone shrinks them immediately. To force your Mac to free up that 150 GB right away, you can delete your local library file and let a fresh, optimized version sync down from iCloud.
Hope this helps.
How to better optimize photo library to free up storage
