Photos Library Taking Up Space on Your Mac: Can You Delete It?

No, this is your dataDiskmack safety tier: Your files

**/*.photoslibrary~/Pictures~/Library/Photos

No, don't delete your Photos library. The Photos Library.photoslibrary bundle in ~/Pictures is your actual photo and video collection, not a cache or leftover junk. If you delete it, your photos are gone, and they only come back if iCloud Photos holds a full copy of everything. The two fixes that actually work, letting iCloud keep the originals or moving the library to an external drive, are both covered below.

What it is

Photos Library.photoslibrary is the single package where the Photos app keeps everything: your original photos and videos, edited versions, thumbnails, and the database that ties them together. It lives in ~/Pictures by default. In Finder it looks like one file, but it's really a folder (right-click it and choose Show Package Contents to peek, but don't touch anything inside). It grows with every shot you take or import, and video does most of the damage. A few minutes of 4K footage outweighs hundreds of stills, so libraries in the tens or hundreds of gigabytes are normal on a Mac that's been in use for years.

You may run into this under a few different paths. ~/Pictures is the parent folder, and usually the library is most of its size, plus any loose exports you've saved there. ~/Library/Photos is a different thing entirely: small support data for the Photos app, not your pictures. Your actual collection is in ~/Pictures. One more quirk: macOS treats the Photos library as protected personal data, so disk tools can't read inside it (or size it) unless you've granted them Full Disk Access. That's why some utilities report it as 0 bytes or skip it.

Is it safe to delete?

Deleting the library means deleting your photos. The only scenario where they come back is if iCloud Photos holds a full copy of every original, and even then you should verify that at icloud.com before touching anything, because re-downloading a large library takes hours or days and any photo that never synced is lost for good. If you've never turned on iCloud Photos, there is no second copy unless you made one yourself. Treat this bundle the way you'd treat a box of family albums, not a cache folder.

The ~/Library/Photos folder is a separate case: it's app support data, it's small, and deleting it reclaims almost nothing while risking odd behavior in the Photos app. Leave it alone. And never delete individual files inside the .photoslibrary bundle to save space; the database that tracks your photos will no longer match reality and the library can end up corrupted. Diskmack recognizes anything matching *.photoslibrary as your personal files, not junk, and never includes it in a cleanup.

How to check its size

In Finder: In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder (or press Command-Shift-G), type ~/Pictures and press Return. Click Photos Library.photoslibrary once, then press Command-I. The Get Info window shows its size.

In Terminal:

du -sh ~/Pictures/"Photos Library.photoslibrary"

Keep the tilde outside the quotes so your shell expands it; if you renamed or moved the library, adjust the path.

How to clean it

Empty Recently Deleted first. In Photos, click Recently Deleted in the sidebar, then Delete All. Photos sit there for up to 30 days and still count against your disk.
Delete large items through the Photos app, never through Finder. Open the Media Types > Videos album, sort by recently added, and clear out screen recordings and duplicate takes you don't need. Then empty Recently Deleted again.
If you pay for iCloud storage, open Photos > Settings > iCloud, turn on iCloud Photos, and pick Optimize Mac Storage. macOS keeps full-resolution originals in iCloud and replaces local copies with smaller versions as your disk fills up.
To move the library to an external drive: quit Photos, then drag Photos Library.photoslibrary from ~/Pictures to the external drive and wait for the copy to finish completely.
Double-click the copied library on the external drive. Photos opens using the new location. If you use iCloud Photos, go to Photos > Settings > General and click Use as System Photo Library so syncing continues.
Only after the moved library opens cleanly and your photos are all there, drag the old one in ~/Pictures to the Trash and empty it. Keep a backup until you're certain.

Never delete or rearrange files inside the .photoslibrary bundle itself. The library's database will stop matching the files on disk and the whole thing can become unreadable.

Will it come back?

This isn't a cache, so nothing regenerates on its own. The library grows for the ordinary reason that you keep taking photos, and video accelerates it. If you turned on Optimize Mac Storage, macOS manages the local footprint automatically and you shouldn't have to think about it again. If you moved the library to an external drive, future growth lands there instead of on your internal disk. Expect to repeat the delete-old-videos pass once or twice a year either way.

Common questions

Can I delete files inside Photos Library.photoslibrary to free space?

No. The bundle contains a database that tracks every photo, edit, and album. If you delete originals from inside it, the database no longer matches the files and the library can become corrupted. Always delete photos through the Photos app, then empty Recently Deleted.

I use iCloud Photos. Is it safe to delete the local library?

Only if iCloud holds a full copy of every original, and you should confirm that at icloud.com before doing anything. Signing back in rebuilds the library, but the re-download can take days on a big collection. Also remember: deleting photos inside the app removes them from iCloud and from all your devices, so that is not a way to free space while keeping the photos.

What is ~/Library/Photos and can I delete that?

It's support data for the Photos app, not your pictures. Your actual library is in ~/Pictures. The support folder is small, so deleting it reclaims almost no space and can confuse the app. Leave it alone.

Why does my disk tool show the Photos library as 0 bytes?

macOS blocks apps from reading inside the Photos library unless they have Full Disk Access, because it's personal data. Grant the tool Full Disk Access in System Settings > Privacy & Security if you want it to report the real size, or just use the du command above.