If you are a bit short of space on your Mac, here’s how to transfer your photo library to an external drive and store it there. How to copy the Photos library to a hard drive. By default, the photos and videos you import into Photos are stored in the Photos library in the Pictures folder on your Mac. When you first use Photos, you create a new library or select the library that you want to use. This library automatically becomes your System Photo. Nov 12, 2019 If you use the iCloud Photo Library service, all the images in your Photos or iPhoto Library are stored in iCloud, and any new photos you take with an iOS device are added to it and are accessible on all your devices that have iCloud Photos enabled. Despite this, the images and videos in your iCloud Photo Library should be backed up just like. I made a backup of my iPhoto Library. Now, I want to open my backup iPhoto Library on Microsoft computer. It seems not possible to open the Library on Windows. Also, I don't have any Apple computer anymore. I cannot open the Library. Is someone familiar with this issue? Do you know how to solve this issue? If you are looking for specific photos, navigate to the Originals folder. Photos are organized by date. If you have the newer version of iPhoto called Photos launched in 2015, you can find the photos using a similar method except instead of looking for iPhoto Library it's named Photo Library.
When people lose their wallet, phone, or computer, it’s often not the money they miss, but the photos. This shouldn’t be the case! With recent developments in accessible and affordable tech, there are lots of easy and convenient solutions to ensure that even if your devices get lost, stolen, or damaged, you still have your photos to enjoy.
It’s likely that you have multiple photo libraries scattered across different devices, which makes managing your files and backups extra difficult. Don’t fear! Below are quick catch-all solutions to reconfigure your mobile device, cloud storage, and computer back into backup harmony.
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Where Are Photos Stored On Mac?
Most Mac and iPhone users used to the iPhoto library may be asking, “Where are my photos on my Mac now?” Truth is, with the OS X 10.10.3 (Yosemite) release, the new Photos app has effectively replaced iPhoto for Mac. So the first step now would be to open Photos from your Dock or Launchpad and take a look at Albums to see what you got in there.
Just so you know, the iPhoto app will still work if you already have it installed on your computer. So in the battle of iPhoto vs Photos, it doesn’t make a huge difference which one you use. What’s important is that, if you use both, you may have different content in separate locations.
Within the Apple ecosystem, iCloud is the default cloud storage system that keeps a version of your all photos online. What’s great is that by using Photos or iPhotos, it automatically uploads the photos you take and stores them on its servers.
iCloud allows your iPhone, Mac, or another Apple Storage device such as an Apple Time Capsule to be an extension of others. But don’t rely on it too heavily as this type of setup is sync-based, which means that if you delete a photo on one device, it’ll be deleted elsewhere.
For that reason, if you’re serious about not losing your precious pictures, here are some quick and convenient ways that might just save the day.
How to backup Mac to iCloud
Let’s start with the bare minimum photo backup job. With pictures in the Photos app being automatically backed up to iCloud, what about photos in other libraries? Or what happens if you don’t use an iOS device to capture your life?
There are quite a few locations where photos might live on your Mac. Take a look at the Pictures folder, hard drive locations, Desktop, and Downloads folder. The key is to have anything you wish to upload to iCloud moved to the iPhoto app.
How to backup photos on Mac to iCloud:
Now do the reverse. Duplicating iCloud and creating an offline backup will allow you to put your photos on an external hard drive or into other backup systems, thus making it easier to create multiple backups and save you from any disaster.
Unfortunately, photos do take up a large amount of storage on your Mac, which can lead to your computer slowing down. This is just another solid reason for why you should transfer your photos onto an external hard drive.
How to download iCloud photos to Mac:
There you have it — every photo that gets sent to the iCloud will download itself onto your Mac as well. And now that your photos are saved on your Mac, you can use Time Machine to transfer them to an external hard drive.
How to backup MacBook photos to external hard drive
Apple clearly recognizes the importance of backing up your photos, and that’s why your Mac comes with its own backup app Time Machine already installed.
The benefit of using Time Machine is that you can automate your backups, which could include apps, music, photos, emails, documents, and system files. To create backups with Time Machine, all you need is an external storage device.
To perform a photo backup using Time Machine:
If you can’t see a pop-up window right away, then open Time Machine from System Preferences and click Select Backup Disk manually.
Depending on how many photos you have, the transfer process could take some time. So give yourself a pat on the back while you wait. Although, you should consider some potential hazards just before you tick this task off the to-do list.
Time Machine could sometimes be fairly superficial and you might encounter some issues if you ever need to recover and restore you Mac. For one, Time Machine requires an Apple specific HFS+ filesystem to store backups, so it won’t back up files that don’t conform to this format. Additionally, the backups Time Machine creates aren’t bootable, which means that you can’t actually restore your device to the exact state you had before.
How to transfer photos from Mac to external hard drive
If you decide not to use Time Machine, there’s a simple workaround for your iPhoto library. To move photos library to external hard drive, you just require a little drag-and-drop magic.
All kernel extensions must be signed, and you can’t disable System Integrity Protection from within Mac OS X itself. The operating system kernel itself puts checks on the root user’s access and won’t allow it to do certain things, such as modify protected locations or inject code into protected system processes. /bin. /System. Applications with elevated root permissions can no longer tamper with system files.You’re most likely to notice this if you attempt to write to one of the following directories:. System library extensions on mac.
How to backup photos on Mac manually:
For those who have more than one iPhoto library, it's important to create backups for all of them. As mentioned above, look in your Pictures folder, all drives, Desktop, and Downloads folder for any rogue images that you want to have backed up.
How to backup a Mac completely
Picture this predicament. You’ve put all of your eggs in one company’s basket, and they have a data breach. Now your files and folders are potentially compromised in the hands of someone else.
This is why you should consider using trustworthy options to store additional backups. A robust backup app like Get Backup Pro offers secure diversified storage. As well as backup, archive, disk cloning, and folder sync software for Mac, you can use Get Backup Pro to quickly create bootable backups so you can get back up in minutes.
The aptly named Get Backup Pro takes securing archives to the next level. Using encryption types AES-128, AES-256, Blowfish, or Triple DES, it gives you an option to protect all your backups with a password.
How to backup a Mac with encryption:
Additional photo backup and recovery
To complement Get Backup Pro, Disk Drill is recovery software that lets you resurrect deleted or lost files and folders, yes, including your photo library.
Bring back whatever is lost
If you’ve accidentally deleted an important photo, make sure you have Disk Drill installed on Mac. This powerful app will revive anything.
As well as it being another place to store backups of your Mac, Disk Drill has a handy duplicate remover so that you aren't clogging up precious memory space in your drives. Before you get straight into a photo backup, make sure you allow Disk Drill to make changes to your drives in your Security & Privacy System Preferences.
How to create recoverable backup files:
Taking the extra time now to protect what’s important will save you from future heartbreak. What’s more is that the apps mentioned above, Disk Drill and Get Backup Pro, are all free to try on Setapp.
Setapp is the app subscription that has your back. As well as offering life-saving tech, it has over 150 apps that will make your Mac-life what you always dreamed.
As Setapp is free during a 7-day trial, you can enjoy browsing through the app categories where you will find plenty of apps that will make you say, “Oh I could really use that!”
I've had a multi-Mac household pretty much since college, rocking a laptop and desktop in addition to miscellaneous iOS devices throughout the years. Dropbox and iCloud sync made most of the pains of using several Macs disappear, but iPhoto was always a problem. My laptop is tiny! My iPhoto library, not so much.
Thankfully, Photos for Mac — paired with iCloud Photo Library's Optimize Storage feature — makes working with and syncing multiple Macs a breeze. Here's how you can do it.
How to use Photos and iCloud Photo Library with multiple MacsWhere Is The Iphoto Library Stored On Mac
Here's a quick, simple breakdown on setting up your Macs to support Photos and iCloud Photo Library.
I recommend starting with your biggest iPhoto library; it'll usually be on your desktop Mac. When you open Photos for the first time, your library should import automatically; if it prompts you to create a new library, your Photos library may be stored in another location on your Mac, and you may need to manually open it.
Once you've imported your biggest library on your Mac, make sure iCloud Photo Library is turned on and syncing. You can do this by following these steps:
Now, open your other Mac, and launch Photos. If you have an iPhoto library on that secondary Mac, follow the same steps as above — import your library, then turn on iCloud Photo Library. If you have duplicates of the same photo on each computer, iCloud should automatically resolve those conflicts when it syncs, providing you with just one version of your photos when the sync process finishes.
If you don't have an iPhoto library on your secondary Mac, create a new library in Photos and turn on iCloud Photo Library. If you want to save storage space on this secondary Mac, make sure Optimize Mac Storage is selected: This will save a certain percentage of images and video locally to your device, while providing thumbnails of all the others for you to download at your leisure.
After you've set up all your Macs with Photos and the sync process has finished, you're now good to go. From here on out, any time you add photos, they'll sync to every computer you've set up with Photos.
What syncs, what doesn't sync
Photos for Mac syncs a lot more than just your original photos and videos. According to a support document on Apple.com, here's what else you should expect to see sync:
There are a few things iCloud Photo Library won't sync, however. Here's Apple's list:
For those not using iCloud Photo Library
If you've chosen not to enable iCloud Photo Library, Apple still offers you free syncing of your last 1000 photos via My Photo Stream, which doesn't count toward your iCloud disk space.
This will sync and download images you've imported or taken on other devices, but you won't have the option to optimize your storage or sync your albums.
Where Is The Iphoto Library On My Mac![]()
Octoober 2019: Updated for macOS Catalina.
Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.
macOS CatalinaMain
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