If the photos on your Mac are taking over your hard drive, or you just want to start your photo and video collection afresh, the good news is that Photos for Mac allows you to delete all the media in the Photo Library in just a few short steps.
- Can I Delete All But One Mac Photo Library Location
- Can I Delete All But One Mac Photo Library Not Updating
![All All](/uploads/1/2/6/6/126627317/283769636.jpg)
One option is to use iCloud Photo Library to store full-res versions in the cloud, and lower-res versions on your computer (as well as being able to view them on other devices). But iCloud Photo. You don't uninstall Photos for Mac. Not if you've got any sense at all. Photos is bundled with Apple's operating system (Mac OS X and now macOS) with many other apps: iMovie, iTunes and Safari, to. 2020-3-3 So when you crop or enhance a photo from your iPhone, you see the changes when you access your library from your Mac. Your original photos and videos are stored in iCloud and you can go back to them at any time, and revert any changes you made. The photos and videos that you delete on one device are deleted everywhere that you use iCloud Photos. 2017-2-10 So, what I wanted to find out is whether I can safely delete the old 'iPhoto Library'? The reason I'm asking is because my Mac is running low on disk space and by deleting the iPhoto library I can free up 64GB of space on my hard drive seeing as it's an unused duplicate?
Before you go down this route, make sure you've backed up any photos or videos that you want to keep. iCloud will only let you restore all your deleted photos at once, but you can take a more selective approach by using a third-party solution like Google Photos or Dropbox on Mac or PC.
![Can i delete all but one mac photo library repair Can i delete all but one mac photo library repair](/uploads/1/2/6/6/126627317/293385825.jpg)
Note that if you've enabled iCloud Photo Library, any photos and videos you delete on your Mac are also deleted on any other devices for which iCloud Photo Library is also enabled (your iPhone or iPad, for example).
How to Delete All Photos on Your Mac
- Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
- Select Photos from the Library section at the top of the left column.
- Press the key combination Command+A to select all photos in your library.
- Press the Backspace key. Alternatively, right-click any photo and select Delete [number of] items.
- Next click Recently Deleted in the Library section in the left column.
- Click Delete All at the top-right corner of the window.
- Click OK to confirm.
If you use iCloud Photos, you can save on space in future by selecting Preferences... in the Photos menu bar, clicking the iCloud tab, and choosing Optimize Mac Storage. This ensures full-resolution photos and videos are replaced with smaller, device-sized versions. You can still download full-resolution versions from iCloud at any time.
If you’re using the new Photos app on your Mac instead of the older iPhoto app, you most likely have a duplicate photo library floating around on your hard drive. For a lot of people, that could mean gigs and gigs of wasted storage space, especially on shared Macs with multiple migrated libraries.
Here’s how to check for multiple libraries and how to delete them…
Before deleting your old library: Make a backup
While the Photos app should have imported all your photos and videos just fine, I always recommend having backups handy. Perhaps you’ll delete an old photo by accident at some point and want it back later. If you have a copy of your old iPhoto library still handy, you can pull it form there as a last resort.
I saved my old iPhoto library to my Dropbox account. You can of course use any service of your choice, or just drop it onto an external hard disk you have laying around. Regardless of how you do it, I’d highly recommend saving a copy before deleting it.
Once you’ve backed up your old iPhoto library (if you chose to do so), you can proceed with deleting it:
- Open a new Finder window on your Mac.
- Click on Pictures in the left hand navigation. If it isn’t there, just search for your pictures folder using Spotlight.
- You should see two libraries, one is your old iPhoto Library and one is your new Photos library.
- Move your iPhoto Library to your trash can and empty it.
Check the storage space on your Mac, you should notice that you have more storage space available. If you are on a shared Mac and have multiple user logins, everyone using the new version of Photos on that Mac should make sure they don’t also have duplicate libraries.
Can I Delete All But One Mac Photo Library Location
I’m not sure why Apple doesn’t create a process to delete old versions of libraries after migrating to Photos, but they should. Until that happens, you’ll have to delete your old library manually.
Give this tip a try and see how much storage space you were able to clear up. As you can see in the screens above, my old iPhoto library was over 30GB, which was definitely a healthy chunk of hard drive space that I now have back.
Your Mac storage tips?
This is one of many ways to regain storage space on your Mac without having to sacrifice losing data. But we know there are lots of others. What are some of your favorite Mac storage tips for recapturing space? We’ve love to hear them in the comments!
Update
Can I Delete All But One Mac Photo Library Not Updating
A follower on Twitter referenced to me an article written on Six Colors pointing out that the library is actually hard-linked between versions. While this may be true when you first migrate, it seems that if you make any changes to any files and the libraries become different, splicing can and will occur.
To test this theory, I deleted my iPhoto library on my other Mac to see how much storage was freed up. For those wondering, my iPhoto library was 35.99 GB and my Photos library was 41.16 GB. You can see the before and after results on my hard disk space below. I was able to free up over 20 GB of space. So I’m not sure what I think about hard linking or how well it’s actually working between Photos and iPhoto.
Bottom line, if you’re short on storage space and you want to free some up, there’s really not much point in having two photo libraries floating around on your Mac. Hard linking or not, deleting the old library will free up space in almost every case.