Move your media files
Consider keeping large files on an external hard drive
in general, the more free space you have on your Mac, the faster it will run. This is fine in theory, but the Mac is made to be used. What if you have a large music and video collection or thousands of family photos?
If you have a reliable internet connection, some of your data can be stored in iCloud. If you are an Apple Music subscriber, you can also enable iCloud Music Library, whereby all your iTunes music can be uploaded and streamed over other devices. This is handy in terms of saving space as you can delete files locally from your Mac and redownload them as and when you want to listen to them. However, beware of doing this if the original on your Mac is of a higher quality than 256Kbps in AAC format; the copy stored in iCloud will be more compressed. This feature, however, isn’t always ideal. It doesn’t work well with Family Sharing and certain content, like home videos, can’t be stored in iCloud this way.
It’s simpler to store your entire iTunes library on an external drive. This gives you access to every media file even when your internet connection is patchy. The steps opposite show how to do this. Only delete your original iTunes Media folder once you’re certain everything is working correctly.
In order to proceed, you’re going to need an external hard drive. The online Apple Store sells external drives that have been formatted for macOS but, in practice, any USB-connected external drive is fine, although you may need to format it first. See page 44 for help with this.
Do not be tempted to use the same external drive both for Time Machine backups and for storing your media. Time Machine deletes older backups as space runs out, but you don’t want it to be vying for space with your music collection.
Once your iTunes library has been consolidated on the external drive, consider transferring other libraries to the drive as well. Your Photos library, which is located in your Pictures folder by default, can be quickly and easily moved to an external drive by selecting it, choosing Edit > Copy, browsing to a place on the external drive, and then choosing Edit > Paste. Once the transfer is complete, double-click the new copy of the library, then choose Photos > Preferences. The new photo library will be listed beside Library Location. Click on Use as System Photo Library to make this change permanent. As with iTunes, only delete the original library on your Mac once you’re sure your photos are safe.
iMovie and Safari
The iMovie app, which is used for editing home videos, can also take up huge amounts of space. Moving its library is very simple, but first open the app itself and select your library from the Libraries list. Next choose File > Consolidate Library Media. This should make sure that any video clips, images and so on are stored within the library itself.
Next, quit iMovie and, in Finder, go to your user account’s Movies folder. Move the library in the same way as for the Photos app by using Edit > Copy, navigating to the external drive and choosing Edit > Paste, then double-clicking to open. Bear in mind that the original copies of any videos or images you imported into iMovie will still be in their original location, so you may need to
delete these manually, along with the original iMovie library. As before, only do this once you’re sure your media is safe.
By default, the Safari web browser on your Mac saves any downloaded content to your user account’s Downloads folder. Over time this folder will grow in size, slowing down your system. Fortunately you can change the location of your Downloads folder. In a Finder window, navigate to your external drive. Choose File > New Folder, name the new folder, and press .
Open Safari’s preferences and click the General tab. Click the pop-up menu next to “File download location” and choose Other. You can now select the new folder you created on the external drive; click Open to confirm your selection. From now on Safari will store all downloads on that drive.
If you do choose to store content on the external drive, while this may speed up your system, remember that the drive must be connected at all times for you to access your content. This may sound obvious, but if certain apps, such as Photos, cannot access your library on the external drive they may create a new one in your user account’s folder with none of your personal data in it. If this happens, open the library on your external drive once again by double-clicking it.
Remember that Time Machine does not back up external drives by default. You can change this by opening System Preferences’ Time Machine pane and Options at the bottom right. Highlight your external drive in the list and click the minus button to include it in backups to your Time Machine drive. This may take up a lot of space so make sure your Time Machine drive has plenty available.