mac move photos library to external drive

Mac move photos library to external drive how to#
Mac move photos library to external drive mac#

You might need to purchase additional iCloud storage. Click the iCloud icon and check the box to turn on iCloud Photo Library.

Click the Photos icon and immediately hold the Option key. Select the Photos library on the external drive.

If you’d like to access the photo library without having to attach the drive, move the library to iCloud and then use iCloud Photo Library to create a new smaller library on the internal drive without overfilling it. Perhaps you’ve been storing it on an external drive. Sometimes a Photos library has outgrown your internal storage.

Remove the Photosync user accounts and old Photos libraries when you’re sure everything is in the primary library.Ĭopying a Photos library from an external drive to the cloud.

Mac move photos library to external drive mac#

When you turn on iCloud Photo Library, you may need to set the Photos preferences to Optimize Mac Storage if the combined high-res originals won’t all fit on the drive. The last library is your primary Photos library – usually in the original Mac user account.Repeat steps 6–9 for each Photos library you want to sync.For large libraries, you can sign into the Photosync account and let it run at night, then sign out and use your normal user account when you need to work on other projects. Uploading will continue the next time you sign back into Photosync. When sync is complete, quit Photos. This process takes time – from hours to days, depending on the size of the library and internet speed. Images are uploaded to the cloud in the background as long as the computer is turned on and signed into the Photosync user account. Monitor upload/download progress in the Photos preferences window. If possible, wait until iCloud completes uploading & downloading.Choose Optimize Mac Storage. This downloads low-res photos & videos from iCloud, while uploading full-res images from this library as quickly as possible.You might need to purchase additional iCloud storage before continuing.

(We’ll address the primary or largest library last.)

Click the Photos icon and immediately hold the Option key. You’re given the ability to select a Photos library, which will be the one to merge with iCloud.

Sign into the Photosync account, then log into iCloud. You’ll need to use the same iCloud account with each Mac account to sync photos.

This is the key to making a Mac sync several Photos libraries.

Create an empty Mac user account.Call it Photosync.

Copy each additional Photos library to an external drive.

But don’t do anything with it yet – we’ll address the primary library last. Usually, this is the largest Photos library, or your current System library.

Determine which of your Photos library will be your primary library.

Connect to the fastest internet available and plug laptops into the A/C outlet. Uploading & downloading takes a lot of power.

Mac move photos library to external drive how to#

We’ll show you how to work around this limitation to combine several libraries.Ĭarefully review the steps outlined below to determine if this is within your skill set. Ordinarily, o nly one Photos library can sync with iCloud Photo Library – this is called the System library. Or perhaps several users on a single Mac have their own Photos libraries. For example, you might have a Photos library on your internal drive and another on an external volume. To combine photos from different devices & Macs, see instructions for enabling iCloud Photo Library on iPhone, iPad & Mac.Īn iPhone or iPad can only have one Apple Photos library. Even if you don’t need these features in the long term, the capability to merge photos from several computers & devices is useful. Any new images are copied to the cloud, and the photos already in the cloud are added to the Mac or device. Every picture stored on the Mac, iPhone or iPad is compared to the ones already in iCloud Photo Library. With the optional iCloud Photo Library feature, all photos & videos are kept safe on Apple’s servers.

The Photos app for Mac, iPhone & iOS is the best place to keep digital pictures and videos.