How To Reduce Photos Library Size

Question

How To Reduce Photos Library Size

Many of my friends have noted that the Apple Photos Library is FREAKING HUGE and its size seems to have no relationship to the real size of the actual photos we care about. I have figured out how to reduce its size a lot without breaking anything (I HOPE!) You are welcome.

DISCLAIMER: This worked for me and three friends. Your mileage may vary. TAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR PHOTOS LIBRARY RIGHT NOW!

Here are the steps:

Reducing the size of Apple Photos Library

Make a complete backup of the Photos Library located in your Pictures folder (or wherever you have it you've moved it.)
Exit Photos and any apps that might access the Photos Library like Mail, etc.
Note the size of the Photos Library. Click it once to see it's attributes. It might take it a little while to search through the contents and calculate the size.
Right click on the Photos Library.
Click Show Package Contents
You are now inside the library.
Locate the Previews, Thumbnails, and iPod Photos Cache folders.
If you look inside you see things like a list of years and such. If you right click each folder and click Get Info you can see how big they are.
Delete everything inside each of those folders.
To be safe, do not empty your Trash, yet.
Hold down Command+Option and click on the Photos icon to open photos. You will be asked if you want to run a repair on the Photos Library. You do, so do that. It will take time.
Then you note that your pictures are replaced with an icon if a cloud. But if you double-click an image you can see it. Now you have to repair the thumbnails.
Select ALL of your Photos from the All Photos folder. Yes. All many thousands. This next step is going to take HOURS if you have 16k+ photos like I do.
Click on Image in the menu bar and click on Rotate Clockwise.
It will take time, but you will then be asked if you really want to to that to all of the photos. Say yes. You will get a status bar.
Once that is done, undo it but selecting all of the photos and clicking on Images and Rotate Counterclockwise. Again, wait, and then be asked if you are sure, say yes, see status bar, wait some more.
When it is done, exit Photos. Open Photos. All of your previews should be there.
In my case, I reduced a 130GB library to 49GB. YAY! I hope you do as well.
RECOVERY: If things don't work out, you can put the folders back from the Trash or restore the entire Photos Library from your backup in steps DISCLAIMER and 1. YOU DID DO THE BACKUP, RIGHT? 🙂

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9), 2.7 i7, 16GB RAM, SSD, 2TB TM USB

Posted on Sep 22, 2015 12:11 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Sep 22, 2015 2:14 PM in response to Gryphon MacThoy

1 - at best this only works ONLY if you are using iCloud Photo Library which you do not mention

2 - other than deleting the iPod Photo Cache (which you can do any time but it will be recreated if you do an itunes sync to an IOS device) y9u have accomplished nothing that checking the primes box would not do if the space is needed - and as you view and edit photo the full reoution versions will be downloaded and if there is space they will stay

In short you have done a great deal of work, endangered the integrity of your photos and have really accomplished nothing

If yo feel better having more unused space for a while go for it - but suggestion to others, not such a good idea and given that many users of these forums can not follow a two step simple procedure successfully your suggestion will cause many people to lost information and photos

LN

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Answer 2

Sep 22, 2015 2:17 PM in response to LarryHN

Dear discussions-replies <discussions-replies@apple.com>,

The email you sent has not been received. This is an old email address and messages received here are deleted and not forwarded. Please contact Gryphon MacThoy on elsewhere. If you actually know him, perhaps call him.

Thanks.

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Answer 3

Sep 22, 2015 4:16 PM in response to LarryHN

First off, what is the "primes box"?

I am using iCloud Photo Library. I do not have the Optimize Mac Storage option turned on, so my local is all full res photos. Anyway... Why should that matter? But you are right, I should have mentioned that...

The original photos are all stored in the Masters folder. All I have suggested is that we remove the thumbnails, previews, and ipod cache. What does that have to do with iCloud Photo Library? Seemingly, nothing. However, the Thumbnails ARE regenerated, but the new Thumbnail folder is about 25% the size of the previous folder size.

My evidence of effectiveness shows that I have accomplished a great deal. 130 down to 49 GB with no loss of photos from my library.

Now then, I suspect that this will grow again as I use the system, however, this library grew to this size in a little less than two weeks for no apparent reason. I have my suspicion about sync'ing problems producing extra data or something, but haven't really spent the time to test it.

Go google around for folks wondering why their Photos library is so huge. Skip past people's confusion about the cross-linked files thing about converting from iPhoto or Aperture to Photos and you will find it is still a problem. No one had any solutions other than search-n-destroy duplicates (did that) and took it upon myself to try other things. I tried MANY things which did not work at all. So far, after about three weeks since I did this, no problems whatsoever, and my library is still only 49.8 GB (800 MB of new photos! yay!)

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Answer 4

Giorno

Level 1

8 points

Sep 23, 2015 2:54 AM in response to Gryphon MacThoy

My Photo Library is 215GB and the Master directory is 188GB. I doubt I will save almost 2/3 of the space like you as Thumbnails is 17GB and Previews is 8GB. 😟

Than you anyway Gryphon McThoy! 😉

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