Mac stay 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.
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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
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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,Step three: Move your
media to an external drive
Outboard your entertainment and make space for work.
FEATURE
Detox your Mac & iOS devicesPod 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.Your 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 organising
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
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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
When you check iCloud
Photos, all the pictures
in the Photos Library on
your Mac are uploaded
to iCloud – provided
your iCloud account has
enough storage.