How to Delete Photos on Mac

We all find our photos precious. After all, they capture precious moments and memories, allowing you to look back and reminisce for many years to come. For this reason, if you’re running out of disk space on your Mac, it may seem intimidating to delete photos out of fear that memories could be lost forever. However, it’s also very easy to create unnecessary duplicates that can be easily deleted to save space on your Mac.

Before we start:

 

It’s easy to end up with lots of duplicate photos on your Mac. These duplicates are useless and take up space on your Mac. This can result in performance issues on your device, so it’s always important to diagnose and fix problems with your Mac. As you, like most people, can have thousands of photos, it can be daunting to locate these duplicates manually. MacKeeper’ Duplicates Finder tool can scan your Mac and automatically identify any duplicates.

 

To remove the duplicate photos with the touch of a button:

1. Download and install MacKeeper.
2. Select Duplicates Finder from the side menu on the left.
3. Click Start Scan, and any duplicate photos will be identified.
4. Select the duplicates you want to remove, and then press Remove Duplicates.

What happens if you remove photos on your Mac

If you delete photos on your Mac, they’ll either be in your Trash folder, or in the Recently Deleted section of the Photos app. You can recover these images within 30 days before they are permanently deleted.

How can you delete photos on your Mac

The fastest way to delete a photo on Mac is to select it and hit the Backspace button. Alternatively, you can trash photos on Mac by dragging it to the Trash icon in your Dock.

But there are more methods to remove photos on your Apple computer—check them out below:

1. Remove photos from Mac with the Trash Folder
2. Delete photos on Mac with shortcuts
3. Get rid of an entire album in the macOS Photos app
4. Delete all photos from MacBook
5. Remove multiple photos on MacBook
6. Delete photos from the Photos Library on Mac
7. Erase photos from Mac, but not iCloud
8. Remove pictures outside the Photos app with MacKeeper
9. Delete photos from the external hard drive on Mac

1. Remove photos from Mac with the Trash Folder

The easiest way to delete individual photos on your Mac is by using Finder to drag them to the Trash can. You can easily recover any photos you accidentally deleted in Trash, too. Start the removal process like this:

1. Open Finder and select the photo you want to delete.
2. Drag and drop the image to Trash in your Dock. Alternatively, right-click on the file, and select Move to Trash.

Our pro tip:

 

If you’re struggling to delete photos on your Mac, you can try the following fixes:

• Restart your computer
• Update macOS
• Reset the SMC
• Reset NVRAM
• Launch in Safe Mode

2. Delete photos on Mac with shortcuts

You can also quickly delete photos in your Photos app using a shortcut, which vastly speeds up the process. Here’s how to perform shortcuts in Photos:

1. Open the Photos app, and select the photo or photos you want to delete.
2. Hit the Backspace button, and the selected photos will be moved to the Recently Deleted folder.
3. Any images within the Recently Deleted folder will automatically be deleted after 30 days.

Hint from our team:

 

If you’re wondering where are photos stored on Mac, they can usually be found within the built-in Photos app on your Mac.

 

The Photos app is very user-friendly, and even allows you to play slideshows on your Mac. This will either be in your Dock, or can alternatively be found in Launchpad. In the Photos app, by default, you’ll be in the Library category, but you can find more categories in the side menu on the left, just like on your iPhone. These categories are Memories, People, Places, Recents, Imports, and Recently Deleted.

3. Get rid of an entire album in the macOS Photos app

You may have created an album in the Photos app, which you can select in the side panel. You can edit and delete these albums within the app:

1. Open the Photos app.
2. Select My Albums from the left-hand menu.
3. Right-click on the album you want to delete and select Delete Album to delete it.

4. Delete all photos from MacBook

You may decide to get rid of photos on Mac if you’re cleaning up your Mac. This is especially useful if you’ve already backed up these photos to iCloud or an external hard drive. Follow these steps:  

1. Launch the ‌Photos‌ app.
2. Select Library from the menu on the left.
3. To select all photos, press cmd + A.
4. Press the Backspace button to delete the selected photos.
5. Click Recently Deleted from the side menu.
6. Click Delete X Items in the top-right corner of the window.

5. Remove multiple photos on MacBook

You may have lots of useless old screenshots, iMessage or WhatsApp image downloads taking up disk space on your Mac. It can be time-consuming to get rid of all of these, but, fortunately, you can bulk delete images in the Photos app. Here’s how:

1. Open ‌the Photos‌ app and select the relevant category or album in the left pane, such as WhatsApp Images or Screenshots.
2. Choose multiple photos in your selected album by pressing cmd + A. Then hit backspace once they’re selected to send them to your Recently Deleted folder.

Good to know:

 

If you’re worried about your privacy, you can delete the identifiable metadata of your images on your Mac. For additional security, you can also remove the location from your photos on an iPhone.

6. Delete photos from the Photos Library on Mac

If your Mac’s photos are synced with your iCloud account, you can remove the images from other devices associated with that account, for example, on your iPhone. Do the following:

1. Launch the Photos app.
2. Select all the images you want to delete. You can do this by clicking on a photo to delete just one image, or you can hold down Shift to delete multiple pictures on MacBook.
3. Right-click on the images you’ve selected and click Delete Photos from the drop-down menu.
4. These images will then move to your Recently Deleted folder in the Photos app. Click Delete x Items to permanently delete them from your Mac.

7. Erase photos from Mac, but not iCloud

As photos can take up lots of disk space on your Mac, we recommend that you store important photos in your iCloud and keep only files you’re currently using on your Mac. You can then access iCloud photos from your Mac using Finder or your web browser. To prevent your photos from syncing to your iCloud drive so you can erase them from Mac, follow the guide below:

1. Click on the Apple logo in the top right corner, then select System Preferences.
2. Then, choose Apple ID and navigate to iCloud > Photos > Manage.
3. From the left-hand side, select Photos and then press Turn Off and Delete. Then, hit Done.
4. In the Photos app, select the images you want to delete, right-click on them, and choose Delete x Photos.

An alternative for those who don't use iCloud:

 

You can also back up your photos to an external drive to free up space on your Mac. You’ll need to make sure your external drive is formatted for use with macOS, meaning it should be in either the APFS format or macOS Extended (Journaled) format. This will have to be on a different drive to the one you may use for Time Machine backups.

 

When you’re ready, do the following:

1. Close down the Photos app by pressing cmd + Q and connect your external drive.
2. Find your photo library in Finder, which should be in the Pictures folder in Finder’s side menu.
3. Drag the entire Photos Library folder to your external drive, and wait for your pictures to copy across.

8. Remove pictures outside the Photos app with MacKeeper

You can manually delete your photos to free up disk space, but it can be a long process. Plus, you might find yourself accidentally deleting something important, or you simply may not have enough time. The good news is that there’s an easier way when using the dedicated Mac cleaner software—MacKeeper’s Safe Cleanup.

Moreover, our app also includes a built-in Duplicate Finder which automatically identifies duplicate images in just a few clicks. This makes it the fastest way to free up space on Mac by deleting your useless photos.

Here’s how you can delete duplicate photos on Mac using MacKeeper:

1. Download and install MacKeeper.
2. Select Duplicates Finder from the side-menu.
3. Hit Start Scan, and MacKeeper will locate all duplicate files on your Mac in the background.
4. Select the duplicate files you want to delete, and then hit Remove Duplicates.

MacKeeper is so esteemed as it can locate identical photos on your Mac, even when they have different file names. You are also in complete control, as it won’t erase anything without your permission. This means that finding duplicate photos on your Mac has never been faster or easier, so you can spend less time editing your old memories and more time making new ones.

9. Delete photos from the external hard drive on Mac

You may want to delete photos from your external drive if it is short of storage space, or if you’ve been backing up pictures to iCloud anyway. Here’s how you can remove pictures from your MacBook on your external drive:

1. Connect your external drive to your Mac.
2. Select your drive from the side menu in Finder.
3. Find the folder your images are located in, right-click on it and select Move to Trash.

Delete your photos from your Mac safely

We all take thousands of photos nowadays, which each preserve important memories. However, as phone cameras get better, each photo’s file size increases. This can, in turn, begin to clog up your Mac’s storage, and there will always come a time when you’ll need to delete some photos— particularly useless screenshots or downloads.

Hopefully, our guide has given you some helpful options to alleviate this issue. We recommend that you back up your photos either to iCloud or to an external drive, rather than storing them on your Mac. To help with this, find out how to download photos from iCloud to Mac so you can back them up.

Finally, use MacKeeper’s Duplicates Finder to identify duplicate photos and delete them in a matter of seconds. It’s a real lifesaver to avoid deleting cherished photos by mistake.