- How Big Can A Mac Photos Library Be
- Mac Photos Maximum Library Size Limit
- Mac Photos Maximum Library Sized
- Mac Photos Maximum Library Size Limit
- Mac Photos Maximum Library Size
No matter how much space you have on your Mac, one day, you may see a “Your disk is almost full” notification. Even if it seems like there is no app or program that would take a considerable amount of storage, the large files may be hidden deep down in your Mac’s memory. Keep reading to discover how to locate such files on your Mac and delete them for good.
Scan the most obvious place
Photos for Mac uses the same hierarchy as Photos for iOS — intelligently grouping images and videos into moments, collections, and years. That lets Photos for Mac show you small moments in time and space, like yesterday at the park, but also collections of moments marked by larger changes, like that party across town or that week at the beach, and even an entire year all at once. When Apple released Photos for macOS, the company chose a clever approach to reduce Photos’ storage consumption, knowing that most users would be upgrading an iPhoto library. For OS X Mail versions 2 and above: from Finder, press Option and select Go, select Library Mail, and find the current mail folder. For Mac OS X Mail version 1: go to Finder Home Library/Mail. If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool. If the volume isn't formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or has been used for Time Machine backups but hasn't been erased, this checkbox will either not be present, or won't be selectable after unlocking.
When looking for large files on their Macs, users often start scanning a bunch of folders stored on their machines. But, usually, the most common destination of all large files is the Downloads folder. You may automatically download thousands of files and forget to remove them. So, checking the Downloads folder on your Mac may help you find lots of forgotten large files and documents that you don’t need anymore.
Looking for the large items may take some time. Free tools, like CleanMyMac X, can accelerate the process by scanning your Mac’s memory and detecting large files. The only task left for you will be to remove the found files all at once.
Find large files using Finder
Another way to search for large files is by using search filters in Finder. It can help you locate the biggest files on your Mac. Here’s how to find large files using Finder:
- Open Finder.
- Find the Search field in the top right and click it.
- Click the Settings symbol and select Show Search Criteria.
- In the list of search filters on the left, choose Other.
- In the window that appears, select File Size and click OK.
- In the second space, select Is greater than and enter the size in the third space.
- Choose KB, MB, or GB in a final filter field.
Remember to select This Mac to get a full list of results. You will then see all files which size is greater than you defined. Look through the found documents and remove unnecessary items that take too much space on your Mac.
Although, this method has certain disadvantages. Finder doesn’t give you a full picture of the large files stored on your Mac. It shows only single files, excluding large folders that comprise a lot of smaller items.
It’s also unclear which files you can safely delete without the risk of removing important documents. Finder neither provides any additional information about files nor shows which folder the file belongs to. So, it’s difficult to decide whether the large file is important or not.
Continue reading to discover how to find the largest files on your Mac using other methods.
Find large files using the Storage Management app
Another solution is to use the built-in Storage Management app.
- Choose Apple menu.
- Select About This Mac.
- In the window that appears, click Storage. Here you can see how much free storage you have and view the amount of space used by different categories.
- Click Manage.
- As the Storage Management app opens, select Documents.
- Browse the Large Files to delete those you don’t need.
Click any file to see its path at the bottom of the window. The Storage Management app also shows the exact size of each document as well as the date you opened it last.
Apple provides helpful recommendations at the top left to help you optimize your storage. Here you can choose to store all your files in iCloud, remove large files like movies and TV shows, turn on Empty Trash Automatically, and reduce clutter.
This method is great for those who don’t have a lot of large files on their Mac. But, if you tend to keep many files on your machine, you may consider using the Storage Management app tiresome.
How to find biggest files on Mac via Terminal
Another way to locate large files on your Mac is to use Terminal. Although some users find commands complicated, if you use them correctly, you can find anything on your Mac. So, you can locate the biggest files on your device, just like that:
- Go to Utilities and open Terminal.
- Execute find command. If you want to locate all files bigger than 1G under the /home directory, for example, type
find /home -size 1G
. - To delete the files enter
find /home -type f -name *.avi -size +2G -exec rm {}
This command will remove all AVI files that are greater than 2GB under the /home directory.
Using this command, you can also limit your search, setting size filters. Then your command will look like this: find /home -size +30M -size -100M
. This command will locate all files that are greater than 30MB but less than 100MB.
Locate and remove large files using CleanMyMac X
If you have enough time, you can look through all data stored on your Mac using the methods described above. In case you want to speed up the process, CleanMyMac X can prove useful. Thanks to its Large & Old files feature, you can look at the bigger picture of all large files found on your Mac and delete them altogether.
Here’s a short instruction on how to find and delete large files using CleanMyMac X:
- Download the free version of CleanMyMac X and open the app once it’s installed.
- Click the Large & Old Files tab.
- Run a quick scan.
- CleanMyMac X will show you all files stored on your Mac. You can sort files based on their size, type, and access date, to see the large items that can be removed from your Mac.
- Check the boxes for the files you want to delete and click Remove.
Using CleanMyMac X, you can remove all unnecessary files quickly and make some space for more important documents.
So, these were some simple methods of how to view all files on Mac and delete them. You can either use Finder, the Storage Management app, or Terminal to find the biggest files on your Mac and clean up your machine of them.
My Photo Stream upload limits
The My Photo Stream limits below are based on anticipated upload patterns. These are the My Photo Stream upload limits:
- Uploads to My Photo Stream per hour: 1000 photos
- Uploads to My Photo Stream per day: 10,000 photos
- Uploads to My Photo Stream per month: 25,000 photos
If you exceed one of these limits, your uploads to My Photo Stream will pause temporarily, and you might see a notification on your device. Your uploads will resume automatically when you no longer exceed the limit, such as in the following hour or on the following day.
Sharing Suggestions limits
Sharing Suggestions are limited to 5000 items with a maximum share size of 1GB.
Shared Albums limits
These are the Shared Albums hourly and daily limits:
How Big Can A Mac Photos Library Be
- Maximum number of photos and videos from a single contributor across all shared albums, per hour: 1000
- Maximum number of photos and videos from a single contributor across all shared albums, per day: 10,000
Mac Photos Maximum Library Size Limit
These sharing limits are separate from the upload limits above. For example, in the same day you could upload 10,000 photos to My Photo Stream, then share those 10,000 photos or 10,000 other photos.
Some additional limits for shared albums:
- Maximum shared albums an owner can share: 200
- Maximum shared albums a user can subscribe to: 200
- Maximum subscribers per shared album: 100 (the number of subscribers on each shared album)
- Maximum combined number of photos and videos from all contributors in any one shared album: 5000
- Maximum number of comments per photo or video in a shared album: 200 (a comment can be either a like or a text entry)
- Maximum characters per comment: 1024
- Maximum number of invites a shared album owner may send per day: 200
Learn more
Learn more about My Photo Stream and Shared Albums.
Photos uploaded to My Photo Stream or Shared Albums don't count against your iCloud storage. iCloud stores the photos that you upload to My Photo Stream for 30 days to give your devices plenty of time to connect to iCloud and download them. Find out how to save photos from My Photo Stream or a shared album to your device.
Mac Photos Maximum Library Sized
These file types are supported:
Mac Photos Maximum Library Size Limit
- Images for My Photo Stream: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and most RAW formats.
- Video and file formats for Shared Albums: MP4 and QuickTime file types, and H.264 and MPEG-4 Video file formats. Videos can be up to 15 minutes in length.
Mac Photos Maximum Library Size
Keep the following in mind when you import photos:
- When you import photos to an iPad or iPhone using the Camera Connection Kit, photos save directly to your Photos tab. If My Photo Stream is on and you're connected to a wireless network, you could reach any of the above limits. To avoid this, turn off My Photo Stream when you import photos to iPad or iPhone using the Camera Connection Kit.
- When you import large numbers of photos to either iPhoto or Aperture, you could potentially reach any of the limits listed above if you selected Automatic Upload in My Photo Stream preferences. Both iPhoto and Aperture will pause uploading to My Photo Stream when they reach the maximum. Uploading will automatically restart at the next hour, day, or month, depending on which limit was reached.
- If you enabled iCloud Photos on your iOS 8.3 device or on OS X Yosemite v10.10.3, My Photo Stream will upload your most recent photos to share with devices not using iCloud Photos. My Photo Stream photos will be automatically added to your All Photos album for devices with iCloud Photos enabled.
Due to storage limitations, your Apple TV might display only your most recent photos.