So it’s an option, but it has tradeoffs.įor most people with burgeoning Photos libraries, a better approach is to offload the entire library to an external hard drive. However, you may find Photos somewhat slower to use, as it has to download full-resolution versions of images you work with, and you won’t have a local backup of the original images. In Photos > Preferences > iCloud, you can enable Optimize Mac Storage, which swaps the full-resolution images for smaller versions, saving a boatload of space. If you’re using iCloud Photos (previously called iCloud Photo Library) to sync photos and videos between your devices, the originals are all stored in iCloud. (Don’t put it on a drive that you’re using as a Time Machine destination because there could be permissions conflicts, and note that Apple doesn’t recommend storing a Photos library on a drive shared over a network.)īefore we explain how to offload your photos, we want to mention another way of reducing the Photos footprint on your drive. If your Photos library has grown to the point where your SSD is nearly full, it might be time to think about offloading it to an external hard drive. SSDs are essential for ensuring optimal performance on a Mac, but because they’re expensive, many people don’t have as much built-in storage space as they would like.