Step three: Move your media
to an external drive
Y
OUR PHOTOS, VIDEOS and
entertainment content could be
among the biggest users of
storage space. They’re also ideal
candidates to move to an external hard
disk or SSD.1
Offload your photos
How to move your photos depends
on how you’re currently organizing them.
We’ll assume you’re using macOS’ Photos
app, which integrates with iCloud Photos
(previously called iCloud Photo Library)
to assemble all the photos from all your
Apple devices.
In fact, iCloud Photos offers the
simplest way to save space. In Photos,
go to Photos > Preferences > iCloud. When
you check iCloud Photos, all the pictures
in the Photos Library on your Mac
(normally kept inside Pictures in your
Home folder) are uploaded to iCloud
— provided your iCloud account has
enough storage. Any pics added to iCloud
Photos from your other Apple devices are
also previewed in Photos.
If you choose the Download Originals
to this Mac option, all the pics on your Macstay there, and all the other pics in iCloud
Photos are copied to your Mac’s Photos
Library too.
The alternative is Optimize Mac
Storage (a separate setting from the
option for iCloud Drive). In this case,
as your Macintosh HD gets full, photos
synced to or from iCloud Photos are
reduced to low–res previews in your
Photos Library, keeping the full versions in
iCloud. That can save a lot of disk space,
but also means you can’t rely on having
a safe copy on your Mac of any photos you
accidentally delete from iCloud Photos.
Remember, with iCloud Photos, deleting
a photo anywhere deletes it everywhere.
A better way is to keep originals, but
on an external drive. First make sure all the
pics seen in Photos are actually in your
Photos Library. If you imported them
with “Copy items to the Photos library”
unchecked in Photos > Preferences >
General, they may be scattered around
other folders. In the Photos view (under
Library in Photos’ main window), select
everything (Cmd+A) and go to File >
Consolidate. This will either offer to copy
any stray pics into the Photos Library or
confirm that they’re all there already.
Now go to Photos > Preferences >
General and click Show in Finder. Quit
Photos and, in the Finder, drag Photos
Library to your external drive. When it’s
finished copying, hold Option while clicking
the Photos icon in the Dock. In the Choose
Library dialog, click Other Library and
select your newly copied Photos Library
on the external drive. Everything should
look the same as before.
If you’ve been using Optimize Mac
Storage because you ran out of space, you
can now switch to Download Originals to
Mac: the full versions of all your iCloud
Photos pics will download to your Photos
Library on the external drive, continuing asPod save the cast
>>> The Podcasts app
just had to be different,
didn’t it? Hold Opt while
clicking the Go menu in the Finder
and open Library. Inside the
subfolder Group Containers, find
the catchily named 243LU875E5.
groups.com.apple.podcasts.
Inside this is a folder called Library
(again), and inside that, in Caches,
are your podcasts. They’re in
standard .mp3 or .m4a formats,
but with meaningless names.
You can copy these files to
back up your podcasts, but don’t
try to move or delete them.
Instead, open Podcasts, click
Downloaded, then hover over the
duration at the right of any
episode. Click the three dots and
choose Remove to delete the file.
If you can find its file among those
you’ve copied to somewhere safe,
you can play it as audio, but you
can’t reimport it into Podcasts.Outboard your entertainment and make space for work
Image rights: Apple.
Feature
24 APR 2020 maclife.com