I am looking to understand the disk space cleanup tool on a Macbook with Big Sur. I was trying to clean up the unnecessary space from my mac and found out that the Photos is using a space of approximately 2GB. I looked up the Photos app but I could not find anything there.
I read the answers to this question:Deleted photos from MacBook but storage space not reclaimed but none of it helped.
Here are the relevant screenshots.
Storage
Photos AppWhat would allow me to release this 2 GB?
Answer
Open Terminal App and issue the following command:
du -h ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary
That should list what’s taking up the space. There’s a whole tree of folders inside the “Photos Library.photoslibrary” directory. All sorts of metadata, databases, etc.
If you have nothing to retain, you can just delete the “Photos Library.photoslibrary” directory and if you relaunch the Photos app it will recreate it in a default state. There must be left over metadata after you deleted all the photos.
PS: You may need to restart the mac to see the effect in the storage app.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : bigbang , Answer Author : nohillside