How to Delete Photos on Mac to Free Up Space 2025

Looking for ways to organize your Mac photos? It's a good idea to remove photos that are damaged, duplicate, and blurry from your Mac.

If you're unsure about what steps to take, you've come to the right place. Here, you will learn how to delete unwanted photos from your Mac, creating more space for what you want to do on your device.

How to Delete Photos in the Photos App

The Photos app is the ideal tool for managing and organizing your photos. Follow these steps to delete unnecessary ones from your Mac.

1. Open the Photos app.
2. In the Library, you will find all the photos. To delete a photo, select it, Control-click it, and select Delete 1 Photo. (To delete multiple photos, drag to select the photos you don’t want, then right-click or Control-click them to delete.)

   

3. Step 2 removes the unwanted photos from your Recently Deleted folder, but actually, they are still on your Mac. To delete them permanently, click Recently Deleted, select the photos you want to delete, and click on Delete X Photos in the upper right corner.

   

How to Delete Duplicate Photos on Mac

Duplicate photos can be created in various situations. If you don’t clean them up regularly, they can accumulate and consume a significant amount of your precious storage space.

Manually finding them can be a daunting task, and you might not locate all of them. To expedite the process, you need a duplicate photo finder for Mac.

BuhoCleaner is the perfect tool for the job. It can quickly identify duplicate and similar photos in the Photos app and any folder outside the app.

Here’s how it works:

1. Download, install, and launch BuhoCleaner.
2. Click on Duplicates and select the folder to scan. (If you want to scan photos in the Photos app, select PhotoLibrary.)

   

3. Once the scan is complete, you will see all the duplicate and similar photos on your Mac.
4. From the Auto Select menu, select Smart Select, which automatically marks all duplicate photos.
5. Preview them before clicking the Remove button.

   

6. Switch to the Similar tab if you want to delete the similar photos you scanned.

How to Delete All Photos on Mac

If all the photos in your Photos app are of no use to you, follow the steps below to delete them from your Mac.

1. Open the Photos app.
2. Press Command + A to select all files in the Photo Library folder, Control-click them, and select Delete X Photos.

   

3. Go to the Recently Deleted folder and click the Delete All button in the upper right corner to delete all photos on your Mac permanently.

The Photo Library is where all the photos imported into the Photos app are stored. If you've relocated your Photo Library to an external SSD, you're free to delete it from your Mac. Once deleted, all photos within it will be removed.

Here’s how to delete the photo library on your Mac:

1. Open Finder.
2. Click on Pictures in the Finder sidebar.
3. Locate the Photo Library and drag it to the Trash.
4. If you want to remove it for good, just empty your Trash.

Bonus Tip: How to Recover Deleted Photos on Mac

At times, you might accidentally delete photos. So, how can you recover the deleted photos?

Don't panic; if they haven't been permanently deleted from your Mac, restoring them is quite easy.

• For photos deleted using the Photos app, go to the Recently Deleted folder, select the ones you want to recover, and click the Recover button.

• For photos deleted using the Finder, go to the Trash, select the deleted photos, control-click them, and select Put Back.

If neither of the two methods works for you, then use Time Machine, the official backup tool for Mac. If you've previously used it to back up your Mac, you can leverage the backups to restore deleted photos.

Final Words

Now that you know how to delete unwanted photos on your Mac, go ahead and organize them to free up space.

It’s worth noting that BuhoCleaner is beyond a duplicate photo finder; it’s also an easy-to-use Mac cleaner that can free up gigabytes of Mac space with just a couple of clicks. Give it a try yourself!