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.