Learn how to move your Photos library to another drive to save space on your Mac. Prepare your external 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). Perfect your photos and videos with intuitive built-in editing tools, or use your favorite photo apps. And with iCloud Photos, you can keep all your photos and videos stored in iCloud and up to date on your Mac, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and even your PC. The Mac Software Ecosystem Goes Beyond the Store. Apple’s iOS has had an App Store built into it from the moment it first allowed third-party applications back in iOS 2, released in 2008. But the Mac App Store debuted in 2011 as part of Mac OS X 10.6.6.

Apple Photo Storage App On Macs Laptop

Introducing Apple One. Bundle your favorite services and enjoy more of Apple for less. Learn more

The best place for all your photos, files, and more.

iCloud is built into every Apple device. That means all your stuff — photos, files, notes, and more — is safe, up to date, and available wherever you are. And it works automatically, so all you have to do is keep doing what you love. Everyone gets 5GB of free iCloud storage to start, and it’s easy to add more at any time.

iCloud Photos

All your photos and videos.
Always available.

Apple Photo Storage App

A lifetime of photos
on all your devices.

With iCloud Photos, you can browse, search, and share all the photos and videos from any of your devices, whether they were taken yesterday or years ago.

Take all the photos you want. Without worrying about space on your devices.

To save space on your devices, the original, full‑resolution photos you take are automatically uploaded to iCloud. You’ll still always have a lightweight version of every photo on your device, and you can download the originals whenever you need them.

All your files available from all your devices.

The files you keep safe in iCloud Drive are easy to get to, no matter which device you’re using. You can access all your files from the Files app on iOS and iPadOS, the Finder on your Mac, File Explorer for Windows PCs, or iCloud.com.

Organize files however you want. Get to them on any device you want.

iCloud Drive lets you organize your files with folders, rename them, and tag them with colors. And when you make a change, the update is made across all your devices. You can even have everything in your Mac Desktop and Documents folders automatically available in iCloud Drive.

Apps using iCloud

Your favorite apps are
even better with iCloud.

All your essentials.
Accessible from all your devices.

iCloud automatically keeps apps — including Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Reminders, Safari, and some of your favorite apps from the App Store — updated across all your devices. So when you add a new phone number, bookmark a website, or update a slide in a presentation, the change appears everywhere.

Collaborate with Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Notes.

Work with others on documents, presentations, and spreadsheets and see edits as they’re made. With live updates on all your devices, your collaborators will always be on the same page.

Every message. Updated across all your devices.

iCloud automatically stores all of your messages. Search for an address, a funny exchange, or anything else. And you can pick up every conversation right where you left off. Even when you move to a new phone or computer.

iCloud Backup and Restore

All the things that matter.
Safe and secure.

Automatic backups give you peace of mind.

iCloud automatically backs up your iOS and iPadOS devices when they’re connected to power and Wi-Fi. So if you lose your device or get a new one, you’ll have all the things that matter without missing a beat.¹

Move to a new device with everything you loved about your old one.

iCloud makes moving your settings, photos, apps, and documents to a new device seamless. Just sign in to iCloud when you set up your new device, and you’ll be ready to go in minutes.

Two‑factor authentication helps keep your data safe.

Two‑factor authentication is an extra layer of security designed to ensure that only you can access your account. That means your account can only be accessed on devices you trust, like your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

Find the storage plan that’s right for you.

The right amount of storage depends on how you and your family members want to use your devices. Everyone gets 5GB of free iCloud storage to get started and it’s easy to upgrade at any time. Your apps and any iTunes or Apple TV purchases don’t count toward your iCloud storage, so you need it just for things like photos, videos, files, and device backups.

iCloud storage is also included in Apple One. You can purchase additional iCloud storage separately whenever you need it.

Apple One

Bundle iCloud
with up to five other great services.
And enjoy more for less.

Family Sharing

Family Sharing makes it easy for you and up to five family members to share Apple Books and App Store purchases and an iCloud storage plan.³ And everyone can access an Apple Music family plan and subscriptions to Apple TV+, Apple News+, and Apple Arcade.

Designed with your
privacy in mind.

Apple takes the security of your data and the privacy of your personal information very seriously. Because of that, iCloud features are designed to keep your information safe, secure, and available only to you.

Macbook Photo Storage

Managing a huge gallery and organizing photos is a tricky business, even if you’re generally tidy, so it’s always a good idea to use some help. Especially when there’s software out there designed specifically to deal with an overload of pictures.

The only trouble with professional photo organizing software is that, much like any photo equipment, it’s painfully expensive. In this article we’ll suggest tools that tame your giant photo gallery without leaving a hole in your pocket.

Best photo manager apps for Mac reviewed

1. Gemini 2: The duplicate photo finder

The first step to getting your photos organized is to remove all of the duplicate or similar-looking images. Chances are when you take a picture, you don’t take just one; you take 15. All from different angles, maybe even with different poses. But rarely do you need or want all of them, so now they’re just taking up space on your Mac.

The easiest way to get rid of those files is to get a duplicate photo finder, Gemini 2. It scans your whole gallery and locates the duplicate or similar photos. Gemini 2 lets you quickly review and choose which pictures you want to delete. But the app also uses AI to select the best version of each image, and it will get rid of all of the copies with just one click of the Smart Cleanup button.

2. Photos: Best photo organizer on Mac

Here’s the biggest secret to good photo organization: master Photos. You might be thinking: seriously, is a native Apple app really any good? And you’d be surprised how much it is.

Since macOS Sierra, Photos has been getting makeovers and new features. In macOS Mojave, the app lets you organize content just by dragging-and-dropping it, and with Smart Albums, you can instantly group photos by date, camera, and even the person in them. At this point, it’s just a really good piece of photo management software.

3. Mylio: A free photo manager app

If you’ve been meaning to consolidate your photos in one place for years, Mylio will help you do just that. When you first start using the app, it offers to look for your photos on the current device, on an external drive, and even on your Facebook.

Once all the photos you’ve taken in your lifetime are imported, Mylio organizes into a variety of views. The coolest one is Calendar, showing you photo collections on an actual calendar. That way, you’ll quickly find the photos from your son’s first birthday, even if you forgot how you named the folder. Plus, Mylio offers a free mobile app, so you can access your photo library wherever you are.

4. Adobe Lightroom: Cloud-based photo editor and organizer

While Adobe Lightroom is probably best known as a powerful picture editor, it’s also loaded with tons of tools to help keep your photos organized. It stores your pics in the Adobe Cloud so you can access all of your albums and folders on another computer, phone, or even an internet browser.

Apple Photo Storage App On Macs Computer

One of the great things about Lightroom is that it makes non-destructive edits to your photos. So, you can revert back to the original image at any time, and you don’t need to create a duplicate just to preserve your picture.

5. Luminar: Organize and view pictures without importing them

If you have your pictures saved in various folders across your computer, then Luminar is the app you’ll want to check out. It shows you all of your photos without having to import any of them into a library. So you can start using Luminar in almost no time.

6. Adobe Bridge: Free photo library manager

You might be wondering why Adobe would make two separate photo managers. Aside from Adobe Bridge being free for everyone, it serves an entirely different purpose. Bridge is solely an image and asset manager. Unlike Lightroom, it doesn’t have any editing functionality.

So, what’s the point then? Where Bridge really shines is if you’re using other Adobe products, such as Photoshop or Illustrator. You can store and organize all of your pictures in Bridge and then open them in any Adobe program without creating a duplicate or searching through the thousands of files on your computer. Plus, Bridge offers a robust search tool making it a breeze to find the exact image you’re looking for.

Final word on photo management on Mac

There are basically two things you need to remember to bring order into your photographing life:

1. Before you get to organization and management, be sure to unclutter your photo library. The easiest way to do it is with a duplicate finder, such as Gemini 2. Otherwise you'll be rummaging around in thousands of photos you don't even need.
2. Photos, the native photo manager on a Mac, can accomplish everything you need to make organizing photos into groups and categories easy.
3. Third-party tools can provide you with added functionality that’s missing in native macOS tools, like calendar view or managing photos right in the Finder.

Now that you know all the secrets to photo organization, Mac photography shouldn’t be that hard or that expensive. Not when you’ve got the right tricks up your sleeve.

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