boyashley

Q: Safely delete Photos from Mac

My girlfriend has a MBA an it is full (less than 2gb).


 

It looks like the culprit is Photos, hogging about 30% of her 128gb drive. She never uses the application, ever (although she still uses iCloud to back up all the photos from her phone).


 

I have turned off iCloud Photo Library/Photo Stream/Photo-sharing inside the Photos app, assuming it would just remove them. But it appears they are all saved locally.


 

If they are ALL backed up to iCloud, and I have those syncing options turned off, can I delete the Photos.app contents? What I want to avoid is her logging back in one day, noticing they are all missing, then just wiping them from her iCloud account.

Photos, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)

Posted on Jul 12, 2016 8:24 PM

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Q: Safely delete Photos from Mac

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  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Jul 12, 2016 9:59 PM in response to boyashley
    Level 10 (84,210 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jul 12, 2016 9:59 PM in response to boyashley

    Not sure what you have

     

    iCloud has many services

     

    You can backup your iPhone to iCLoud

     

    You can not backup your Photos library to iCloud

     

    If she never uses the Photos application and you are 300% positive that she has no photos she wants in the Photos library you can delete the Photos library and empty the trash (there is not undo for this except your Backup - that will guarantee that Photos is not part of the issue - then if is not solved post in the correct forum for the question - probably the iCloud forum

     

    LN

  • by boyashley,

    boyashley boyashley Jul 12, 2016 10:40 PM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jul 12, 2016 10:40 PM in response to LarryHN

    Sorry, I think I confused myself.

     

    She did have 'Copy items to photo library' on, so all her iPhoto images should be in the cloud.

     

    I just don't want to delete all her photos on the mac and then for all the photos on her iPhone to disappear.

  • by LarryHN,Helpful

    LarryHN LarryHN Jul 12, 2016 11:39 PM in response to boyashley
    Level 10 (84,210 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jul 12, 2016 11:39 PM in response to boyashley

    and again

     

    You can not backup your Photos library to iCloud

    the Photos preference to copy items to the Photos library has nothing to do with iCLoud - it is only involved with the local library (and having it checked is strongly recommended

     

    If she is using iCloud Photo Library then any change made on any system will be made on all systems - all additions, all deletions and all edist

     

    If she has only 2 GB available she is in extremely  dangerous territory and need stop stop using her computer until she corrects this - you need a mim of 10 GB for normal, safe operation

     

     

    what are here Photos preferences setting?

     

    LN

  • by boyashley,

    boyashley boyashley Jul 12, 2016 11:06 PM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jul 12, 2016 11:06 PM in response to LarryHN

    "Backing up to iCloud" in the sense that 'iCloud Photo Library' was ticked and was uploading her images to...iCloud.

     

    Originally she had:

    iCloud Photo Library ticked

    Optimise mac storage ticked

    Photo stream ticked

     

    And in General settings, 'Copy items to photo library'.

     

    I have since unchecked these all, and everything that was on her mac, is in her 'iCloud Photo Library'. Just want to know if I am safe to remove the library file (or its contents) from the machine.

  • by léonie,Solvedanswer

    léonie léonie Jul 12, 2016 11:39 PM in response to boyashley
    Level 10 (105,761 points)
    iLife
    Jul 12, 2016 11:39 PM in response to boyashley

    If iCloud Photo Library has been disabled, deleting the Photos library from the Mac will not erase the photos from iCloud.  Copy the Photos Library to an external drive to have a backup, just to be sure, before you delete the Photos Library from the Pictures folder.  If she had "Optimize Storage" enabled, there may not be many full size originals of her photos in the local library anyway, just smaller, optimized versions.

     

    To keep her photos save she needs to download the originals from iCloud to have a local backup copy of her photos available.  Does she have an external backup drive?

     

    Is the Photos Library a migrated iPhoto Library?  Then she may need to delete the iPhoto Library as well, if it is still there, before the storage will be released (see:  Photos saves disk space by sharing images with your iPhoto or Aperture libraries - Apple Support).

  • by boyashley,

    boyashley boyashley Jul 12, 2016 11:40 PM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jul 12, 2016 11:40 PM in response to léonie

    Thank you! Exactly what I was after.

     

    Will try this.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Jul 13, 2016 12:11 AM in response to boyashley
    Level 10 (105,761 points)
    iLife
    Jul 13, 2016 12:11 AM in response to boyashley

    Good Luck!