If you don’t have the disk space to take all your photos you can go into Photos Preferences and Check the ‘Optimize Mac Storage’. Plus, it will probably download the entire cloud-based collection of photos to each library whose photos you want to merge, so you may need a lot of local disk space too. If you haven’t already started using it, it could take a week or more to upload many thousands of photos. More problematic is that the iCloud Photos way of merging will be very slow. iCloud Photos is a good service, so it’s likely worth paying for anyway. Almost everyone will have to pay for additional storage space ($0.99 per month for 50 GB, $2.99 for 200 GB, or $9.99 for 2 TB) for at least the month in which you’re doing the merge. On the downside, using iCloud Photos almost certainly won’t be free unless you have so few photos that the combined library will fit within the free 5 GB of iCloud space Apple gives everyone. It also retains all the metadata surrounding your photos-titles, keywords, albums, facial recognition, projects, and more. The trick is that whenever you designate a library as your System Photo Library, Photos automatically uploads all images that aren’t already present, adding them to the photos already in iCloud Photos. Merge through iCloud PhotosĪpple’s iCloud Photos service offers the best solution for merging libraries. If this is enough to scare you off then read no further. Keep using multiple libraries by subject or year, it helps to keep the libraries smaller and quicker to open and peruse. But if you must merge, read on. You have three options: merging through iCloud Photos, using the PowerPhotos utility, and merging by exporting and importing. Unfortunately, the process is slow, can require a lot of disk space, and may result in the loss of some metadata.

If you struggle with multiple Photos libraries, never fear-you can merge them. But too much separation is annoying-you have to keep switching between libraries, and it’s easy to import new photos into the wrong one.

For instance, a real estate agent might want to keep personal photos separate from house photos taken for work.

That’s good when photos need to be kept completely separate. Photos makes it easy to create and switch between libraries.

Merge apple photos libraries