Mac Copying Photo Library Slow
Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows, and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive.
Before you start, be sure to back up your library.
Prepare your drive
You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled).1 Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.
To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.
Mar 18, 2020 In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users username Pictures, and it's named Photos Library. Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. 
Nov 09, 2018 Find the Photos Library on your Mac, it will be in your Pictures folder. Click the Go menu on the top and then select Home option from the menu. Open the Pictures folder and there you will find the Photos library. TIP: In order to see how much storage your photos have taken. Dec 11, 2018 Luckily, it’s easy enough to copy your Mac’s Photos library to an external drive. This guide assumes you’re using the actual “Photos” app on your Mac, the default if you’ve used iCloud Photo Stream or imported from your iPhone. If you just have your photos in a folder on your Mac. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup. Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.
Move your Photos library to an external storage device
Nov 20, 2016 In this video, I'll show you how to safely move your Photos library to an external hard disk and free up an amazing amount of space in the process. Copying photos from one Mac to another If you want to copy photos from a library on one Mac to a different library on another Mac, you can do that with two basic steps. First, follow the instructions in Accessing an iPhoto library on another Mac so that one of your Macs has access to both libraries. Even if you use iCloud Photos, it’s important that you always back up your library locally using one of the following methods: Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos.
- Quit Photos.
- In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
- In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
- Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. If you see an error, select your external drive's icon in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info. If the information under Sharing & Permissions isn't visible, click , then make sure the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' checkbox is selected. If it's not selected, click to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the checkbox.2
- After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
- If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.
Delete original library to save space
After you open your library from its new location and make sure that it works as expected, you can delete the library from its original location.
In a Finder window, go back to your Pictures folder (or whichever folder you copied your library from) and move Photos Library to the trash. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash to delete the library and reclaim disk space.
Open another Photos library
If you have multiple libraries, here's how to open a different one:
- Quit Photos.
- Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
- Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.
Photos uses this library until you open a different one.
Learn more
Mac remove old iphoto library. If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool.
Mac Copying Photo Library Slow Download
1. You can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups.
Mac Copying Photo Library Slow Windows 10
2. 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. Erase and reformat the drive for this option to be available.