Choose the library you want to designate as the System Photo Library. After Photos has opened the library, choose Photos Preferences from the menu bar. Click the General tab. Click the Use as System Photo Library button. If you open a second or different library in the Photos app, and you haven't designated it as the System Photo Library. Jun 11, 2016 I'm looking for the install folder for the Windows 10 'Photos' app. It's this one: I'm trying to set some mouse hotkey commands, and in order to do that I need to direct my Logitech software to the app location, or even a shortcut location would do.
Photo Libraries tend to grow over the years, and sooner or later they will be too large to be stored on the system drive and we will need to move the library from our system drive. to an external storage. Do not move the library to a NAS or any other remotely mounted volume, and do not put it onto cloud volume (iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive). This will not work, because Photos is strictly a single user application and the Photos Library cannot be shared over the network.
There are only two safe options:
- Use iCloud Photos and keep the library in iCloud with optimize Mac storage enabled (Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support)
- Use a directly plugged in external drive. The drive needs to be prepared as described here: (Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support)
Any other option, however tempting it may be, is currently (Photos 4.0 on macOS 10.14) not supported.
Location System Photo Library
Location System Photo Library Free
Considerations when preparing the external drive:
Where Is Photos Library Located
We can move our Photos Libraries to an external drive, but the drive needs to be correctly formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS and locally mounted. (Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support)
- Do not format the external drive for the Photos Library as case-sensitive, if the internal drive is not case-sensitive. A case-sensitive drive for the Photos Library can cause flag, if the drive is to be used from different user accounts or computers.
Why not use the Time Machine Drive?
You should not use the drive you are using for Time Machine to host your Photos Library, or Time Machine cannot back up the library. And since Photos 3.0 and 4.0 the the permissions may conflict with the time machine backup. See: Back up the Photos library on Mac - Apple Support
WARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup.
Occasionally Photos will also not be able to connect to the library again, if you want to open it a second time.
This user tip was generated from the following discussion: Where is it save to store a Photos Library? Requirements for the external drive
The previous version of this user tip is here: Where is it safe to store a Photos Librar… - Apple Community
Comments are closed.