How to find the large files in your photo library.

My Apple photo library was way bigger than it should be. It turned out I had some very large videos in it. There’s no way of arranging your photos by size from within the Apple photos app. There is a way to browse these files outside of Apple Photos and arrange them by size. Here’s how to see the largest files in your Photo Library.

Here’s a video explaining it, otherwise read on!

View the Photos Library

To find your photo library in your Finder, go to your user folder (the one that looks like a house icon) then go to the ‘Pictures’ folder then find a file called ‘Photos Library.’

Photos Library is actually a folder, but if you click it, it will just open the Photos app. So, to see what’s inside the folder, you need to right-click and select ‘Show Package Contents.’

Now click on the folder that says ‘originals.’ Inside this there will be multiple folders storing your photos (mine were numbered 0-F).

Open one of these folders and you will see all your photos.

To sort by size you need to turn on ‘View Size.’

Turn on ‘View Size’

With the Photos folder open in the Finder, go to the menu bar at the top of the screen and select ‘View’ and then ‘Show View Options.’

Now tick the option that says ‘Size.’ This will display the file sizes.

Now all the sizes of the photos (and movies) will be displayed.

If you click on the ‘Size’ column at the top of the window this will sort from largest to smallest.

You can now see the movies that are taking up a lot of space.

You can play the movies (hit spacebar) then decide whether to delete them or move them out of your Photos Library.