Syncing and storing large numbers of photos on mac

Does anyone else have an issue with photos taking up way too much space on their MacBook Air? We have a lot of photos so have the 2TB iCloud. On my phone and iPad the photos app takes up about 25gb of storage. On the Mac it takes up over 80gb. It’s really slowing down my Mac. I already have maximise my Mac ticked for syncing to iCloud. I tried creating a photo library with a limit of 30gb storage to try to get the Mac to only sync smaller versions of our photos, but it now says that syncing is paused because there’s not enough storage. (Aside from the 30gb library there is about 60gb of unused storage for other processes) How can I make my Mac sync and store the photo library as smaller versions like my phone and iPad do? I’m at my wits end & to the point of investing in an external hard drive if I can’t do that so I can run other processes efficiently. Thank you in advance for any help.

Posted on Oct 2, 2026 12:53 AM

1 reply

Richard.Taylor

Level 7 (25,466 points)

Oct 2, 2026 8:03 AM in response to 2menefotoz

2menefotoz wrote: …Does anyone else have an issue with photos taking up way too much space on their MacBook Air? We have a lot of photos so have the 2TB iCloud. On my phone and iPad the photos app takes up about 25gb of storage. On the Mac it takes up over 80gb.

That sounds reasonable. By the way, it's the Photos Library, not the app that shows the Library, which takes up the space. On a Mac, there's way more stored locally, since the Mac does so much more.

It’s really slowing down my Mac.

I don't use Optimize on my Mac, and yet I don't notice slowdowns. 80GB shouldn't be that big a deal. What is the size of your Library at iCloud.com?

You don't tell us about the storage on your Mac. What is your storage on this Mac? At System Settings>General> Storage, my Mac says 745 GB of 1TBB used. What does yours say?

Many operations use the iPhone's empty storage space to move files around. If you run out of storage, then those operations may not be able to be completed and, ironically, that can mean that even deleting doesn't work. If you have less than 10% available, then things can get lost forever. This is also true if your iCloud storage space gets low.

On my 1TB MacAir, I had crazy things happen when I had about 12% free. That all cleared up when I transferred some stuff to an external drive and got over 150 GB free. The amount of storage at iCloud.com isn't a consideration in this. Local storage must be freed up.