If you lot observe that your photograph library is first to take up too much room on your Mac'southward difficult bulldoze, information technology might be a good idea to start using iCloud to shop them instead. This can help reduce the space those images occupy, while also ensuring that they are safely on Apple's servers if disaster befalls your Mac, and besides meaning you tin can view all those images on all your Apple devices. Here's how to upload photos from Mac to iCloud.

How to store photos on iCloud Photograph Library

To store your Mac'south photos in iCloud, it isn't a affair of copying them all and dragging them to a folder marked iCloud. Instead, there'due south a much better way in the form of iCloud Photo Library. This volition not only keep your images on Apple tree's servers, but also allow you to sync them with other Apple devices via iCloud.

Of course, you'll need to have plenty storage bachelor in your iCloud account to exist able to utilize the service. Apple gives y'all 5GB for free, but this won't be enough, so you lot'll desire to explore some of the higher capacity tiers.

These price as follows:

  • 5GB – Free
  • 50GB - £0.79/US$0.99/CA$1.29/AU$1.49 a month
  • 200GB - £2.49/U.s.$ii.99/CA$three.99/AU$4.49 a month
  • 2TB - £half-dozen.99/The states$ix.99/CA$12.99/AU$14.99 a month

You lot can read more about the benefits of each tier and how to upgrade in our how much does iCloud cost? guide. Each of these chunks of iCloud storage tin can be shared with your family unit if you set up Family Sharing.

To enable the iCloud Photo Library characteristic, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Photos app on your Mac.
  2. In the top left corner, click Photos then select Preferences.
  3. Click the iCloud tab option.
  4. Tick the iCloud Photos box.

How to move Mac photos to iCloud: Enabling iCloud Photo Library

Now, any images in the Photos app will be automatically synced upwards to the iCloud servers (providing you have enough iCloud storage available).

Tin I delete the photos on my Mac one time they're in iCloud Photos?

Just syncing your images with iCloud Photo Library won't gratis upwards whatever space on your Mac, as information technology only backs them up to the cloud. So, you lot may ask yourself whether y'all tin at present delete them locally while having a version in iCloud? The answer is no. Definitely not.

iCloud isn't a true backup, just more a way of syncing your library across devices. This ways that anything you delete on your Mac volition likewise be deleted in iCloud.

There is a born feature though that enables you to have the full-resolution versions stored safely in iCloud, while much smaller versions are kept locally. This won't change your images at all, and you can e'er download the full-resolution version at whatsoever fourth dimension, making it a not bad way to save infinite on your Mac while too moving the bulk of the storage to iCloud. We'll explain how to use this characteristic next.

How to reduce the space taken up by photos on your Mac

Once your photos are stored in iCloud you tin cull the Optimise Mac Storage choice to shop low-res images on your Mac. Here's how:

  1. Follow the steps outlined to a higher place for enabling iCloud Photograph Library.
  2. In one case in the iCloud tab, you'll observe there are two main options available: Download Originals to this Mac and Optimise Mac Storage.

    How to move Mac photos to iCloud: Optimise storage

  3. Select the Optimise Mac Storage pick and the existing full-resolution images on your Mac volition be replaced with the smaller alternatives.

This setting should event in a hefty reduction of the storage space your photos have up on your Mac, but without losing any of your images or sacrificing their quality (at to the lowest degree of the originals).

Information technology's worth emphasising again that if you were to delete any of these image stored in iCloud on any of your devices the original will exist deleted in iCloud. So don't!

How to back up your Photos with software or external drives

While iCloud Photos is a bully manner to sync your images beyond devices and have copies in the cloud, if yous want to ensure that those precious moments stay safe and are backed upwards, then nosotros suggest also using software to create dedicated backups of not only your photos, but also documents and other data.

Of course, there'south Apple's ain Fourth dimension Machine, which is a solid pick, and you can use iCloud to back upward certain things on your Mac (but not a Time Automobile backup unfortunately), simply it's also worth exploring the wide range of 3rd-political party solutions you'll find in our guide to the best Mac backup software.

If y'all're desperate to save space on your Mac, then yous could move your photo library to an external drive. For our pick of the current storage offerings, see our guides to the all-time external hard drives for Mac and best external SSDs for Mac.