Last week my MacBook hit me with the “Storage Almost Full” notification. I checked System Settings, and Photos was eating 74GB. Seventy-four gigabytes. I’ve been importing from my iPhone since 2019 and never once thought about what was accumulating.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably staring at a similar number. Here’s how I got it down to under 30GB without losing anything I cared about.
What’s actually taking up all that space
Before deleting anything, it helps to understand what’s in there. In my case:
- Screenshots. Hundreds of PNG screenshots from work, bug reports, tweets I wanted to remember. PNGs are uncompressed. A single Retina screenshot is 3-8MB.
- Duplicate imports. Every time I plugged in my iPhone or used AirDrop, some photos snuck in again. Photos.app is worse at catching this than you’d expect.
- Old RAW files. I went through a photography phase in 2021. Those RAW files are 25-50MB each. I haven’t opened them since.
- Videos hiding among photos. A few 4K vacation clips, each 500MB to 2GB, quietly inflating the total.
- Originals + edited versions. Photos.app keeps both. Crop 200 photos and you’re storing 400.
Most people’s libraries are some combination of these. The fix depends on which ones apply to you.
1. Delete what you don’t need
Always step one. Costs nothing.
Start with duplicates. On macOS Ventura or later, Photos.app has a built-in Duplicates album under Utilities in the sidebar. It catches exact and near-exact matches. This alone freed 4GB for me.
For a deeper pass, Gemini 2 finds similar photos too — three shots of the same sunset where you only need one.
After duplicates, go through your screenshots. Sort by date, select everything older than a year. Be honest with yourself. I deleted about 600 screenshots and felt nothing.
2. Compress your images
This is where the biggest surprise was for me. I had over 2,000 PNG screenshots still in my library, and they were taking up almost 8GB.
PNGs are lossless, which is great if you’re inspecting individual pixels and pointless if you’re keeping a screenshot of a Slack message from 2022. A 5MB PNG converts to a 200-300KB JPG with no visible difference at normal viewing sizes. Multiply that by 2,000 and you’re recovering 7GB+.
I used Picmal for this. Exported the screenshots from Photos, dragged the folder into Picmal, picked JPG, clicked convert. Three minutes for 2,000+ files. Everything runs locally, nothing gets uploaded.
Same logic applies to any PNGs or TIFFs you’re keeping for reference rather than pixel-level accuracy. JPG or WebP at 85% quality looks identical to the original.
3. Turn on Optimize Mac Storage with iCloud Photos
The single biggest space saver, if you’re willing to rent storage from Apple.
Go to System Settings > Apple Account > iCloud > Photos and turn on Sync this Mac with Optimize Mac Storage enabled. Your Mac keeps thumbnails locally and stores full-resolution originals in iCloud. Open a photo and it downloads the real file on demand.
I went from 74GB to about 12GB of local storage after enabling this.
The trade-offs are real:
- You need iCloud storage. The free 5GB is a joke. I’m on the 200GB plan ($2.99/month).
- No internet, no full-resolution photos. On a plane or with bad wifi, you get thumbnails.
- The initial sync is slow. Mine took two days to upload everything.
If you can live with those, nothing else on this list moves the needle as much.
4. Move old photos to an external drive
Some photos you want to keep forever but don’t need on your laptop. Family archives, old travel photos, the photography phase.
Export the originals from Photos.app (File > Export > Export Unmodified Originals), save to an external drive, delete from your library. Verify the files open on the drive before you delete anything.
I moved about 15GB of pre-2020 photos to a 1TB SSD in a desk drawer. Not elegant. No monthly fee.
5. Convert RAW files you don’t need anymore
If you shot RAW at some point and you’re never going back to edit those files, converting to JPG saves grotesque amounts of space. A single RAW file (ARW, CR2, NEF, DNG) is 25-50MB. The JPG at high quality is 2-5MB. Ninety percent gone.
Batch convert with Picmal: drag in the folder, pick JPG, set quality to 95%, convert. Keep quality high since you presumably care about these.
One thing you can’t undo: once it’s a JPG, the RAW editing latitude is gone. If there’s any chance you’ll re-edit a photo in Lightroom, keep the RAW. For the 300 shots from a trip where you already picked your favorites, JPG is fine.
What I actually did
Here’s the actual sequence, start to finish:
- Used the Duplicates album in Photos.app to merge duplicates. Recovered about 4GB.
- Exported 2,100+ PNG screenshots, batch converted them to JPG with Picmal. Went from 8GB to under 1GB. Took 3 minutes.
- Deleted ~600 old screenshots I’d never look at again.
- Moved pre-2020 photo archives to an external SSD. About 15GB.
- Turned on Optimize Mac Storage with iCloud Photos.
Total time: maybe 45 minutes. Total space recovered: went from 74GB down to about 28GB locally, with everything backed up in iCloud.
What I’d avoid
Don’t delete your Photos library and rebuild it. I’ve seen this advice online. You’ll lose albums, edits, People tags, and Memories. There’s no reason to do it.
Don’t install “Mac cleaner” apps that promise to free up space with one click. Most are scamware that nag you into a subscription to delete cache files macOS already manages on its own.
Don’t turn off iCloud Photos thinking it will free up space. It does the opposite: your Mac downloads every original locally.
The boring answer is the right one. Delete what you don’t need, compress what you’re keeping, let iCloud handle the rest.
