I need to make room on the internal hard disk of my macbook pro.
How to I move my pictures to an external hard disk and make that my primary library before deleting from my hard disk.
I cannot find a knowledge-base document on this subject
What do I move and what can I safely delete
When Photos appeared I moved from iPhoto
thank you
MacBook Pro, macOS High Sierra (10.13.3), 2.5 Ghz Intel Core I7 16 GB Ram
This is described in this knowledge base document: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517
You need to move the "Photos Library.photoslibrary" package. By default you will find it in your Pictures folder.
And this help page explains, how to switch between different libraries and how to designate a system photo library, after you moved the library: Create additional photo libraries in Photos on Mac - Apple Support
This is described in this knowledge base document: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517
You need to move the "Photos Library.photoslibrary" package. By default you will find it in your Pictures folder.
And this help page explains, how to switch between different libraries and how to designate a system photo library, after you moved the library: Create additional photo libraries in Photos on Mac - Apple Support
Drag the library as an unit to a volume formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS, launch Photos with the Option key held down, click on Other Library, choose it, and keep a copy on a second drive.
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Thank you Niel
Inside my pictures folder I have several items
The largest, both the same size are Photo Library Main.photoslibrary and
IPhoto Library Main.migratedphotolibrary
Can I delete the second?
Do I just drag the first item or can I drag the whole pictures folder and follow your instructions
Tommy
The largest, both the same size are Photo Library Main.photoslibrary and
IPhoto Library Main.migratedphotolibrary
To free the storage on your system drive you need to delete both libraries - Photo Library Main.photoslibrary and IPhoto Library Main.migratedphotolibrary
The librares are sharing their storage for the photos by hard links. As long as you are keeping one of the libraries on your system drive you will not free much storage by deleting the other library.
If you are not sure, if all photos from your old iPhoto Library Main.migratedphotolibrary have been migrated correctly, you may want to save this library too on your external drive.
how to move photos to an external hard disk
