Photos Library too large and preventing MacOS updates

JulesWilko wrote:

Mac Jim,

I have re read my original post - and it appears quite clear to me.

"• If your Mac is low on space, full-resolution photos and videos are automatically replaced with smaller, device sized versions. Full resolution versions can be downloaded from iCloud anytime.

The drive space is so low I cannot update my MacOS.

I have no control over the amount that is taken up locally.

Correct, your full resolution photos and videos are being replaced because of the low disk space, otherwise the size on your Hard Drive would be 1.2TB instead of the 105GB. You cannot remove those smaller device sized versions unless you delete them from the Photos app, which you can view without an internet connection because they are stored on your device.

You keep trying to compare iCloud for Photos using Optimized Storage with OneDrive and Dropbox, but they are not the same thing as stated many times. Your OneDrive/Dropbox photos are only viewable with an internet connection, unless you have them downloaded to your device or the thumbnail has been previously cached. With those services you can remove a photo from your device and also remove it from their server for it to no longer be available. With iCloud, just deleting it from your device will delete it from the server and will no longer be available to view on other devices and all of your photos are seen in the Photos app without an internet connection, even though they may be the smaller device sized thumbnails.

I you want the behavior of OneDrive/Dropbox, use one of those services. What has been recommended here for an extremely large Photo Library where your internal storage size is small, is to store your Photo Library on an external drive. Those are your choices, it is never going to be possible to delete the smaller devices sized photos from your computer without deleting those photos from iCloud.

With just a little math, you could take a selected region screenshot of an individual thumbnail in Photos and see that takes up about 310Kb of space on disk. Multiply that by about 329,000 photos and videos you have there and you end up with about 102GB of storage space, which is pretty darn close to what you are seeing as 105GB. That tells you Optimized Storage is working like it should to automatically offload the full resolution versions, while keeping the device specific thumbnail size on disk.

If you are happy with Dropbox and OneDrive, you may want to just turn off iCloud. iCloud isn't meant to do what they do. iCloud is a Synchronization Service. If that's not what you need, then you may not want to use it. See this:

Understanding iCloud Drive - Apple Community

and this:

Understanding iCloud Photos - Apple Community

As the iCloud Drive article above indicates, you can right click on an iCloud Drive file and remove it from your local drive if you choose.

You are correct that you should keep 10% of your internal drive free. 15% is better. Frankly, 256 GB is pretty tiny for a MacBook drive, and you're always going to be spending a crazy amount of your time trying to accommodate that. You need to get a small SSD that you can use to transfer many of your files to. Here's an example:

This one is 4 TB, weighs 1 ounce, and is about the size of a sugar package. Unfortunately, since I bought that one, the prices have tripled. In any case, you need an external drive for backups. I carry this around even though I have a 2TB drive in my MacBook.

You didn't say how large your iCloud Photos Library is at iCloud.com, so it's hard to know what's going on, there. Macs keep more of an Optimized Library locally, since there is so much more expected of them. A Photos Library can be kept on an external drive, although that is a bit awkward for a portable Mac.

iCloud is not an external storage solution like Dropbox and Onedrive, it is a syncing solution for maintaining access to the data scroll multiple device seamlessly. Optimized storage is working exactly as designed by only taking up 105GB of storage for a library that is 1.2TB. It would be a mistake to think that iCloud is the answer for extending your internal storage, it is not. There is no such thing as a complete offload option and the smaller thumbnails are always going to be stored on your Mac for viewing in the Photo app. When necessary for printing/editing, the full resolution will then be downloaded from iCloud.

You only have 2 options, reduce the size of your Photo Library or transfer it to an external drive. You choose the size of your internal drive when the computer is purchased and you make that decision based on how much data you intend to store there. We will see where users who have purchased too little storage for their needs, but never that had purchased too much.

A beginner user, or even modest user, would not have a 1.2TB photo library, so for them 256GB of internal storage may have been enough, for you it is not.

JulesWilko wrote: So, Mac Jim, You would agree and say that Apples’ Photos app is broken / not very clever.

No, it is working exactly as designed. When you open the photos app, you see the smaller thumbnails of your 314,407 photos and 14,764 videos and those are stored on your drive with no internet access needed. With Optimized Photos using iCloud the full resolution of those are downloaded on your device when needed for viewing a larger version, printing, or editing and automatically managed by the system. If you were not using iCloud to optimize your photos in the Photos app, the full 1.2TB of storage on your internal drive would be needed, instead of the current 105GB.

If you are looking for external storage of those photos where you manually offload them, you would need to use a service such as Dropbox or OneDrive and would need to use the internet to see what is stored there. Any locally stored thumbnails that you could view without internet access would still be taking up storage on your device.

That is not the service that iCloud Photos provides and never has, including when the Optimized Storage of Photos on the Mac was released as an option about 11 years ago. You are never going to see the Photos app open with no thumbnails without an internet connection, and that is exactly what you would see when using OneDrive/Dropbox if you manually offloaded all your photos and there were no thumbnails taking up storage space on your drive.

The choice is yours whatever service you want to use and their benefits/disadvantages. It really does not sound like iCloud is what you want, so as recommended you would probably be better off using one of those other services, or store your Photo Library on an external drive.

You are also wrong about Dropbox and OneDrive. I can “offline” any files I like in Dropbox or OneDrive.

Where did I say you could not manually offload photos with Dropbox or OneDrive? That is the difference where you cannot manually offload all data using iCloud for Photos. If you could, the only thing you would see in the Photos app are the photos that you have downloaded or able to be viewed with an internet connection, and thankfully that is not the case. There is no such thing as manually managing the photo storage if you choose Optimized Storage for iCloud.

Even when looking at the Optimized Storage option in your Photos Settings, it seems to make that point very clear and there is no option to remove the smaller device sized versions that of course is going to take a space on your hard drive. What is has done for you is reduce the space required by more than 10x and that is automatically managed, so if you want that feature you would turn it on and if you don't then turn it off and store the entire 1.2TB on your drive.

• If your Mac is low on space, full-resolution photos and videos are automatically replaced with smaller, device sized versions. Full resolution versions can be downloaded from iCloud anytime.

As you already have been told you need to free up enough space on your boot driver to allow the update to proceed. It's wise to keep about 80 to 100 GB free on your boot drive to facilitate optimal system and application performance.

You can get a 1 TB external SSD for $130 and tip at Amazon.com.

Once you get it erase it and format it to APFS with GUID partition map. Then you can move your Pictures, Movies and Music folders to it.

NOTE: make sure the libraries work as expected on the external SSD before deleting the contents of those folders from your internal SSD. Again, just delete the contents of those three folders and not the folders them selves.

You can rename the folders on the external SSD Pictures2, Music2 and Movies2. Then you can add them to the sidebar of the Finder window for easy access.

JulesWilko wrote: …So I cannot upgrade my MacOS.

Turn off iCloud Photos on your Mac. Erase the Photos Library. That should get you 100 GB. Install the new OS. If you now have 130 GB free, then turn iCloud Photos and "optimize" back on. Wait for the Photos Library to fill from Cloud.

You must keep 25 GB free with the new OS. If you can't do that, then offload some files to an external drive.

A Photos Library can be kept, even un-Optimized, on an external drive, but it's not wise to randomly plug and unplug the drive, because that can disrupt background operations.

Moving a photo out of my library rips it out of the iCloud.

Sure and that's why I said no such thing. What I said was move the Library to an external drive and thereby free up space on your internal drive.

Move your Library to an external drive formatted Mac OS X Extended, Journaled or apfs.

"I can “offline” any files I like in Dropbox or OneDrive.

They also sync my photo library. "

You need to be careful here. You seem to be talking about a "referenced" library as opposed to a "managed' Library.

While a referenced library works, kinda sorta, it is not nearly as robust as we as a community would like, and not nearly as useful as the referenced library option in Aperture (RIP) used to be. So, our recommendation would still be the external drive with a managed library.

Richard.Taylor wrote:

Turn off iCloud Photos on your Mac. Erase the Photos Library. That should get you 100 GB. Install the new OS. If you now have 130 GB free, then turn iCloud Photos and "optimize" back on. Wait for the Photos Library to fill from Cloud.

Yea, that is an option that I intentionally did not suggest but will work in the short term. I just saw that as a way to achieve a short term goal, but the inherent problems of the lack of storage space on the internal drive will continue, as I suspect more photos/videos are eventually going to be added. Once that HD space starts filling up where the 25GB of free space is not being maintained, then you begin to have many more problems using the Mac for any reason, including slowing the Mac down and beach balling.

I still recommend, as you did in your initial post, to use an external drive with the Photo Library moved there, or if a service such as OneDrive/Dropbox is preferred use one of those instead.

If your iCloud Photos Library is 1.2 TB, then I'm surprised that this takes up only 105 GB on your internal drive. I would have expected more. iPhones, with their tiny screens, can see their optimized Libraries use as little as 7% of the iCloud storage, though it's often larger if the phone is used to edit pictures. A Mac has a much larger screen, and an optimize Library may be 20% or larger.

Schools and other institutions use the 256 GB MacAir, and they don't let users store much personal data on it. So there is a niche market for tiny drives.