Supported by
Moving a Mac’s Photos Library
Q. I have a MacBook Air with a 128-gigabyte hard drive and have realized that it is fast filling up with high-resolution picture albums in the Photos app. I don’t use iCloud and don’t want to store my pictures online. How can I copy them to an external drive without messing up the Photos app?
A. Apple’s Photos app lets you create multiple photo libraries within the program, and even store those libraries on external drives. You can reclaim a chunk of your laptop’s drive space by moving your picture library to a new external drive (and deleting it from its original location), but this means you do need to have the external drive connected to the computer when you want to see, edit or share the pictures.
If you prefer to keep your pictures on the ground and out of the cloud, start by getting an external hard drive large enough to hold your growing image library for the foreseeable future. Connect the new drive and quit the Photos program before you copy the library.
Next, go to your Mac’s Home folder and open the Pictures folder. Drag the PhotosLibrary.photoslibrary file to the new drive’s desktop icon (or onto its icon in the window’s sidebar). 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, but you might want to make sure everything is copied properly to the new drive first — and then delete the old library file manually.
To point the program to the library’s new location, hold down the Mac’s Option key and click the Photos app icon in the desktop dock to start it up. As the Photos program starts, the Choose Library box appears. Click the Other Library button, navigate to the external hard drive that now houses your library file, select it and click Open. The Photos app should now display your relocated picture collection.
Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to techtip@nytimes.com. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually.
How to Make Your Smartphone Better
These days, smartphones include tools to help you more easily connect with the people you want to contact — and avoid those you don’t. Here are some tips.
Trying to spend less time on your phone? The “Do Not Disturb” mode can help you set boundaries and signal that it may take you a while to respond.
To comply with recent European regulations, Apple will make a switch to USB-C charging for its iPhones. Here is how to navigate the change.
Photo apps have been using A.I. for years to give you control over the look of your images. Here’s how to take advantage of that.
The loss of your smartphone can be disruptive and stressful. Taking a few simple steps ahead of time can make things easier if disaster strikes.
Many default settings make us share superfluous amounts of data with tech companies. Here’s how to shut those off.
Advertisement