Step three: Move your media to an external drive
Outboard your entertainment and make space for work
Your photos (including videos) and entertainment content could be among the biggest users of storage space. They’re also ideal candidates to move to an external hard drive or SSD.
1 Offload your photos
How to move your photos depends on how you’re currently organising them. We’ll assume you’re using macOS’ Photos app, which integrates with iCloud Photos (previously called iCloud Photo Library) to assemble all the photos from all your Apple devices.
In fact, iCloud Photos offers the simplest way to save space. In Photos, go to Photos > Preferences > iCloud. When you tick iCloud Photos, all the pics in the Photos Library on your Mac (normally kept inside Pictures in your Home folder) are uploaded to iCloud – provided your iCloud account has enough storage – while any pics added to iCloud Photos from your other Apple devices are also previewed in Photos.
If you choose the Download Originals to this Mac option, all the pics on your
Mac stay there, and all the other pics in iCloud Photos are copied to your Mac’s Photos Library too.
The alternative is Optimise Mac Storage (a separate setting from the option for iCloud Drive). In this case, as your Macintosh HD gets full, photos synced to or from iCloud Photos are reduced to low-res previews in your Photos Library, keeping the full versions in iCloud. That can save a lot of drive space, but also means you can’t rely on having a safe copy on your Mac of any photos you accidentally delete from iCloud Photos. Remember, with iCloud Photos, deleting a photo anywhere deletes it everywhere.
A better way is to keep originals, but on an external drive. First make sure all the pics seen in Photos are actually in your Photos Library. If you imported them with ‘Copy items to the Photos library’ unticked in Photos > Preferences > General, they may be scattered around other folders. In the Photos view (under Library in Photos’ main window), select everything (ç+A) and go to File > Consolidate. This will either offer to copy
any stray pics into the Photos Library or confirm that they’re all there already.
Now go to Photos > Preferences > General and click Show in Finder. Quit Photos and, in the Finder, drag Photos Library to your external drive. When it’s finished copying, hold Option while clicking the Photos icon in the Dock. In the Choose Library dialog, click Other Library and select your newly copied Photos Library on the external drive. Everything should look the same as before.
If you’ve been using Optimise Mac Storage because you ran out of space, you can now switch to Download Originals to Mac: the full versions of all your iCloud Photos pics will download to your Photos Library on the external drive, continuing as any new photos are added. Once you’re sure everything has copied correctly and is working as expected, delete Photos Library from your Macintosh HD and empty the Trash.
2 Move your music
Music downloaded from the iTunes Store or imported into macOS Catalina’s Music app lives in the Music folder in your Home folder. (If you’re using an older version of macOS, it’s much the same, except that the folder is called iTunes.)
As with Photos, you may have imported music into Music without moving the original files. In Music, go to File > Library > Organise Library and tick Consolidate Files to bring everything together. Having done this, quit Music and, in the Finder, copy the whole Music folder – containing the Media folder and subfolders – to your external drive.
Holding å, open Music and navigate to the Music Library file inside Music/ Media in your new location. (Unlike Photos Library, Music Library lives in the same folder as your music but doesn’t contain it – it’s just an index.) Then go to Music > Preferences > Files, click Change and select your new Music folder so that new files will be stored there too. All OK? Delete the original Music folder.
3 Shift your shows
If we tell you that videos belonging to macOS Catalina’s TV app live in a folder called TV inside the Movies folder in your Home folder, you can figure out everything you need to know about moving it to an external drive based on the instructions for Music, above.