Mac Move Photos Between Libraries

Nov 23, 2016  Moving a Mac’s Photos Library. If you hold down the Command key while you drag the library file, the Mac will copy it to the new location and then delete the file from its original spot. Jun 21, 2017 Multiple Libraries in Photos and iPhoto. Skip navigation. Copy Photos Between Two iPhoto Libraries - Duration. How To Move Mac Photos Library To An External HDD. Mar 18, 2020  Combine libraries in Photos - Learn more Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac. Change where your files are stored in Photos on Mac. Back up the library in Photos on Mac.

We take a lot of photos with our iPhones and even DSLRs and other cameras. Photos are great for capturing memories with others, or when you just want to get a snapshot of something beautiful. Photos on Mac can help you keep all of your photos in one place, and even help you organize them.

How to add pictures and videos to albums

If you have a lot of photos and videos, one of the simplest and easiest ways to start organizing everything is to make use of albums, especially when you give them good names. And if you use iCloud Photo Library, all of your albums in Photos for Mac get synced to your iOS devices too.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.

2. Click on Photos in the sidebar, under the Library section.

3. Pick out the photos you want to add to an album, either new or existing.

   • Hold down the command key on your Mac and click to select multiple photos.
4. Right-click on your chosen photos and videos.
5. Move the cursor to Add to.

6. You can choose an existing album, or create new album.

   • If making a new album, give it a good, easy-to-remember name.

Optionally, you can make a new album at any time by clicking the + button that appears in the sidebar next to My Albums. Drag-and-drop the albums in whatever order you want to rearrange them in the sidebar.

How to organize albums and folders

When you have a lot of albums, it may be better to clean it all up by organizing albums into folders, which are like collections of albums. It's easy to do.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.

2. Either right-click on My Albums in the sidebar, or hover above and then click on the + button that appears next to My Albums.

3. Click New Folder.

4. Give your folder a name.

5. Drag the albums that you want into that folder.

How to use Smart Albums

Smart Albums are like regular albums, but smarter, obviously. They're great for helping you quickly organize images without the need of manually adding each one to an album because it's all automated.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.

2. Right-click on My Albums or click the + button that appears next to My Albums.

3. Select New Smart Album.
4. Give your Smart Album a name.

5. Choose the parameters for your Smart Album.

6. Click OK to confirm.

Smart Albums have a large number of different parameters, such as photos, faces, aperture, ISO, Live Photo, RAW, Portrait, and more. With all of these options, you can create many different Smart Albums to suit whatever it is you need.

If you're not satisfied with the Smart Album, you can always tweak the settings by clicking on the gear icon that's next to the Smart Album's title, then re-select the parameters you want to use.

Unfortunately, Smart Albums do not sync to your other devices through iCloud Photo Library, as they're only available on your Mac.

Mac Photo Library Management

How to navigate Photos for Mac faster with the sidebar

The Sidebar in Photos is a great way to quickly jump between various areas in Photos quickly and easily. Plus, it helps you find albums that may otherwise be hidden, so this was a design choice made by Apple.

However, if you are running macOS Sierra and older, you can actually hide or unhide the sidebar as you wish.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Click on View in the menu bar.
3. Select Show Sidebar in the menu.
4. The sidebar will appear on the left side of the screen.

5. Follow the steps above to hide it (make sure Show Sidebar is unchecked).

How to navigate moments, collections, and year views in macOS Mojave and earlier

One of the coolest things about Photos is that it intelligently groups all of your photos and videos into moments, collections, and years.

This means that your photos appear in a timeline and are grouped by things like location, or even event. It's a great way to take a look back at your memories and relive those specific moments in time.

The Moments, Collections, and Year views are only available in macOS Mojave and older.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Make sure that you're in the Photos view from the sidebar.

3. Click on Photos, Moments, Collections, or Years buttons at the top of the window.

4. Click on a section of a Year to move to that Collection, or a section of a Collection to drill down into that Moment, or an item in a Moment to view that image or video in closer detail.

5. You can also use your keyboard's arrow keys to move between photos and videos in a Moment.

6. A single click on an item selects it, while a double click takes you to view it.

In the Year and Collections views, thumbnails can be small. You can click-and-hold and then drag the cursor in any direction over the thumbnails to get a larger preview. Letting go will take you directly to the image that the cursor was last on.

How to navigate through Years, Months, and Days in macOS Catalina

To replace the previous Moments/Collections/Years view, Catalina changed it to Years, Months, and Days for simplicity.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.

2. Make sure you're in the Photos section in the sidebar.

   Source: iMore

3. Click the Years, Months, or Days buttons at the top of the window. The default view is All Photos.

4. Clicking on Years lets you see each year as a block. Double-clicking the year takes you into Months.

5. When you double-click on a Month, you'll drill down into the Days view.

How to create a new library with Photos for Mac

You can create a new library for your photos at any time with Photos for Mac. To do so, make sure that you quit Photos and reopen it with the following method to get the Library options.

1. Hold down the Option key on your keyboard.
2. Double-click on Photos on your Mac.
3. Click on the Create New button in the Choose Library window.
4. Name your Library.

5. Click OK.

You've now created a brand new Photos Library. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to migrate over photos and video, so you will need to export the content you want, and then import it back into the new library.

How to switch between Libraries in Photos for Mac

When you create a new library, you may still want to go back to a previous library for something. Fortunately, it's easy to switch between multiple libraries.

1. Make sure that Photos is not open (quit if it is).
2. Hold down the Option key on your keyboard.
3. Double-click on Photos.

4. Click on the name of the library you want to open.

Voilá! Just make sure to repeat this process each time you want to switch to a different Photo library.

How to move your Photos library to an external hard drive

If you're low on storage space on your Mac, you can just move your Photos Library to an external hard drive. Keep in mind though, that you will need to have this external drive plugged in to access your Photos Library, even if you have iCloud Photo Library enabled. And you aren't able to create a second Photos Library that has iCloud Photo Library enabled on your Mac, so be wary.

1. Launch a Finder window on your Mac.
2. Click on the Mac hard drive (Macintosh HD) in the sidebar.
3. Double-click on the Users folder.
4. Double-click on your username.
5. Double-click on your Pictures folder.

6. Click on the Photos Library file and then drag it to your external hard drive in the sidebar.

This process may take a while, depending on how big your Photos library is.

A note on reference libraries

The Photos app technically supports the management of images that aren't locally stored within its library — that is, you can keep a set of images in a folder called 'October Trip' and manage them within Photos without having to make a separate copy of them. You can do this by navigating to Photos > Preferences from the menu bar, selecting the General tab, and unchecking the 'Copy items to the Photos library' box under Importing.

That said, reference libraries won't play nicely with iCloud Photo Library users; you may run into problems when syncing, or not be able to sync at all. So if you plan on using a reference library, you'll have to opt out of iCloud Photo Library.

I also didn't have any luck getting referenced files to sync properly with Photos — I'd delete a photo, but the reference file would stay in its original location, even after deleting it from the 'Recently Deleted' folder. Not sure if that's a bug or just not how Photos wants us managing referenced photos, but worth noting.

Jan 29, 2015  Cool Tip: If you want to transfer your iPhoto Library to another Mac just plug your drive to it and copy your iPhoto library backup to the target Mac’s Pictures folder. Be warned though, this. For copying iPhoto library to a new Mac: Connect your external hard drive. When it displays on Finder, drag the iPhoto Library folder or package to external hard drive. Eject the hard drive from your old Mac and connect it to this new one. Now open iPhoto on the new computer. Hold down the Option key on the keyboard, and keep the Option key. Copy iphoto library from old mac to new mac.

Questions?

Sound off in the comments below!

October 2019: Updated for macOS Catalina.

Photos for Mac

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For all your USB-C needs

The HybridDrive is a USB-C dock with an SSD built in

You need more ports, right? And you probably need more storage, right? What you really need is the HybridDrive.

Free up your space by transferring your Photos library to another external hard drive. By freeing up space you will have valuable space for your work on your Mac. In addition to this, we will help you to back up your whole photo library to iCloud.

Why store photos on external drive

In today’s world, everyone loves to capture photos of every single moment and wants to save all those moments in his/her personal devices like Mac. But saving all your photos can fill-up your Mac storage quickly and you may face the shortage of space.

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There are many options to store your photos data. One of them to store your photos on iCloud photo library but the drawback of saving your photos on iCloud is, if you delete the photo from your device it will be deleted from iCloud as well.

One question raised up here is that what we can do to store all our photos to some safe place if we are running out of space on Mac?

Fortunately, you have visited the right place to find the solution to your problem. There is a safer and easy way to transfer your entire photo library from your Mac to your external drive. The best of this trick is whenever you need to see your photos on your Mac you just need to open photo library app on your Mac it will automatically take you to your saved photos in external hard drive until unless it is plugged in.

Snapshot of the guide

There is a quick snapshot of the guide so you can understand quickly how to move the library to external drive.

• Prepare your external hard drive to move Photo Library. Make sure drive is formatted as MacOS Extended Journaled.
• Go to the location of the Photo library and move it to external drive.
• Set the external library as a System Photo Library (So whenever you open the Photos app it will open the photos library from the external hard drive.)
• After completing trasfer to drive, make sure this external drive is connected to your Mac whenever you want to access photos.

Our article will help you to move your photos from Mac to external hard drive. Continue reading the steps are about to start.

Do not worry if you have already stored your photos on iCloud photo library. Our article will help you to get back your already saved photos in iCloud photos library and will help you to move them to external hard drive. Here is how to do it.

System Photo Library vs Other Library

When you run Photos app on your Mac first time this will ask you to create a new or use an old library. That default Photo library became the system library automatically. Only System Photo Library are allowed to access iCloud services.

Apple Photos Library External Drive

You can create multiple other libraries and work with photos only in one library at a time. To work in another library you have to switch the library. You can also change and set one of the other libraries as a System library.

How to transfer the Photos library to a hard drive

First, make it sure the hard drive you are going to use for Photos library is faster and have enough space. It will save your time and stored your memories quickly. A good hard drive always keeps your stuff secure and there are fewer chances of losing your data.

Before going step by step to move your photo library to external hard, first make it sure that your external hard drive is already formatted for Mac OS Extended (journaled). If it is not formatted for Mac first erase all the data from it and format and choose the option of Mac OS Extended (journaled). Use the Disk Utility on your Mac to erase any hard drive (When you erase any drive in mac everything will be deleted, so please save any important data ).

1. Find the Photos Library on your Mac, it will be in your Pictures folder. Click the Go menu on the top and then select Home option from the menu.
2. Open the Pictures folder and there you will find the Photos library.
   TIP: In order to see how much storage your photos have taken, just Ctrl+Click on the photos library icon and click on Get Info. Now you can make sure that you have enough storage in your external hard drive.
3. It’s time to copy your Photos Library to your external hard drive using drag and drop trick. Now sit back and wait until copies over. The time of transferring photos depends on the size of your Photo Library.
4. When transferred completed, press and hold the Option/Alt key from keyboard and click the Photos app icon from Dock to open it. Keep holding the keyboard key until you see a window otherwise this will open the Photos app.
5. You will see a new window to choose the library. On that window hit the button Other library. Navigate to the new location on your external hard drive and choose the Photo Library.
6. If there is a message that shows “there are some items that need to be downloaded from iCloud Photo library” then you need to click on delete incomplete items and download all those incomplete items.
   Set a photo library as System Photo Library
   
7. We have already moved the library to an external drive now its time to set it as System Photo Library. Doing that will allow it to use iCloud service.
8. Open the Photo Library from the external drive.
9. Click Photos men and then select the Preferences option.
10. On the next window click General and then click Use as System Photo Library button (this will help you to get it to work with iCloud Photo Library)
    TIP: Remember this is the step you need to perform in future If you accidentally unlinked the external drive’s photo library from the Photos app.
11. Go to System Preferences then iCloud then Photos then Options, and choose iCloud Photo Library to turn that back on. See if you have stored all the photos here.

Note: you will need to plug in your external hard drive in order to see your photos).

Delete Photo Library from Mac

Once you have confirmed that all the photos in the library moved to the external drive. You can delete the Photo Library from your Mac computer. Go to the Pictures folder and delete it to free up space from your mac.

How to back up your iCloud Photo Library

If you want to move all your photos which you have already backed up to your iCloud photo library to a storage device connected to your Mac. Follow our step by step guide above, but you need to download all the images from iCloud first.

Move Iphoto Library To Photos

If you have already transferred your Photos library onto the external storage device, now you need to follow these steps.

1. Open Photos on your Mac.
2. Click Photos then click on Preferences.
3. Click on the iCloud tab.
4. Choose Download originals to this Mac.

Copy Photos Library To External Drive

Now all your iCloud photos will be saved on the storage device. (If you are running short of space you would probably not want to do that)

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