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Level 1

9 points

What is the "derivatives" folder in the Photos Library

On my mac, the folder: /pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/resources/proxies/derivatives contains tens of thousands of files -- around 30,000 or so even though I have less than 10,000 photos. Because it is CPU-intensive to scan all these folders and files, this folder is slowing down my cloud backups.

What exactly is this folder and how important is it? I'm assuming it's fine to exclude it from my backups, but would I be okay deleting it?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS Mojave (10.14), 15" Late 2013

Posted on Oct 9, 2018 12:50 PM

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

195,031 points

Posted on Oct 9, 2018 4:08 PM

The folder contains thumbnails in different sizes of all photos in your library.

If you delete it, Photos will just need to recreate it, and you will slow down Photos considerably, if it will be working at all.

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What is the "derivatives" folder in the Photos Library

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