- (In the spirit of confession, I managed to delete the core operating system off my first Unix system in 1994, because I thought, “This file takes up too much space!”) Fortunately.
- Delete Your APFS Partition the Right Way If you use Disk Utility to erase an APFS volume and format it HFS+, you’ll find that the old APFS container sticks around. The same thing happens if you.
- (In the spirit of confession, I managed to delete the core operating system off my first Unix system in 1994, because I thought, “This file takes up too much space!”) Fortunately.
Deletion seems so final, and it’s worthwhile to pause a moment and reflect before clicking any Delete button or selecting any Delete menu item. https://newbayarea550.weebly.com/mac-os-how-to-chanege-default-app.html. In Photos for macOS, you’re presented with many. What happens if you delete the Finder on your Mac? It's always running, and it's your file manager, so it's kind of important to you and the operating system.
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.
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
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.
System Information User Guide
What Happens If I Delete The Mac Os App Uninstall
Use the sidebar of the Storage pane to sort through items by category, see how much space is used, and quickly find documents, apps, books, movies, backups, and other files. Then delete what you no longer need.
What Happens If I Delete The Macos Apple
Note: The categories you see vary, depending on the apps and files on your Mac.
- Choose Apple menu > About This Mac, click Storage, then click Manage.
- Click a category in the sidebar:
- Applications, Music, and Books: These categories list files individually. To delete an item, move the pointer over the file name, then click the Delete button .Note: If you delete an item that you got from the iTunes Store, the App Store, or Apple Books using your Apple ID, the item is still in iCloud, and you can download it again.
- Documents: See all the documents on your Mac. You can quickly view large files or downloads by clicking the corresponding button, and sort files by clicking Name, Kind, Last Accessed, or Size near the top of the window. You can also click File Browser to view the contents and amount of storage used by various folders in your file system.Note: Some folders and files that are already represented by categories in the sidebar—other than Documents—are dimmed.To delete a file, move the pointer over the file, then click the Delete button ; click the magnifying glass to view the file in the Finder.
- iCloud Drive and Mail: These categories provide general recommendations for optimizing storage. To accept the recommendation, click the button.
- iOS files: See iOS backup and firmware files listed individually. To delete an item, move the pointer over the file, then click the Delete button .
- Trash: In this category, click Empty Trash to erase all the items in the Trash. Move the pointer over a file, then click the Delete button to delete an individual file.
See alsoOptimize storage space on your MacDelete files and folders on Mac