Hi,
How is this possible that when I check how my storage is used under "About this Mac", I see that Photos are under two different locations - Photos app and Documents; and that under Documents my photos take four times more space than in Photos app.
Here's a screenshot, sorry that this is in Russian, but just check icons and number behind (Photos 6,45 GB and Photos Library 26,32 GB):
MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS High Sierra (10.13.6)
It means that System Photos Library is just a part of all photos and videos,
Yes, the "Manage Storage" display is not showing disjoint categories. Some items are counted in two places.
If you really want to know, how much free storage you have, look at the Info panel for your system volume in the Finder. Select the system volume and enter the key combination ⌘I (for File>get Info). Check the line "Used" in the "General" section of the Info panel. The "Available" line is too optimistic. It includes items that could be purged to free storage and are currently taking up storage.
This looks like another bone to pick with Apple about the terminology, Keith. 😁
When I open the > About this Mac - Storage panel, it will show this confusing text:
"Photos contains images and videos using 229.57 GB of storage". More appropriate would have been "The System Photo Library contains images and videos using 229.57 GB of storage" and not "Photos contains ..." .
As far as I can tell, the "Photos" entry in the sidebar is showing the size of the current System Photos Library, while the documents section is listing all photo libraries in the user home folder, Pictures folder, etc. So the sizes may differ, i.e., when the user has several libraries largest Photos Library is not the System Photo Library.
Added: the size of the Photos.app is just 54.6 MB on my Mac, that is far from the size of more than 6GB shown in the screenshot in the original post. So this size cannot refer to the size of the Photos.app.
Because photos - and databases - are stored in the library, not the App. The app should only change size after an update.
Thank you for the answer!
Do I understand correctly that after an update other photos/videos that are in other Libraries, Photos app size will increase and eventually should equal to size of all photos/videos that are on my Mac?
And by "update" do you mean synchronization process, not the app version update?
Thank you for detailed decription!
It means that System Photos Library is just a part of all photos and videos, and my 26,32 GB of photos include all those photos that are in Photos app and are 6,45 GB.
So total size of photos and videos is 26,32 GB, and not 26,32 + 6,45 = 32,77 GB, correct?
Some things are quite new to me, taking into account that I've just recently switched from Windows 🙂
Thank you!
I did as you suggested and I see that there is additional info in brackets that part of storage could be purged.
Therefoe, yes, it's not actual free storage...
Thank you again!
Photos storage amount
