Pls answer a question in simple terms.
Using Apple's Photos (Ver: 9.0), I want to back up to an External Drive all photos and also photos from the "Hidden Photos section" to a 1TB external drive. Most are set in "Albums", a few in "Hidden".
iMac 27″, macOS 14.7
Photos keeps all your pics and vids in a "library" that the app accesses when you launch it. By default, Photos Library is stored in the Pictures folder of your home folder. You can open your home folder by choosing Go > Home from the Finder menu bar.
This library houses your albums, including the "hidden" albums. It is this Photos Library file that you want to copy to an external drive. Once you've copied the library to your external drive, you can simply double-click it to open it. By doing so, this tells the Photos app where your library is now located and sets that library as the default to open when you launch the app. (You can have several different libraries on your computer if you wish.)
When you're satisfied that your library is safely moved (and you have a backup of your library), then you can delete the original Photos Library from your internal drive and eventually macOS will make available the space that the library was occupying.
This is Apple's guidance for moving the Photos Library to an external drive:
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Photos keeps all your pics and vids in a "library" that the app accesses when you launch it. By default, Photos Library is stored in the Pictures folder of your home folder. You can open your home folder by choosing Go > Home from the Finder menu bar.
This library houses your albums, including the "hidden" albums. It is this Photos Library file that you want to copy to an external drive. Once you've copied the library to your external drive, you can simply double-click it to open it. By doing so, this tells the Photos app where your library is now located and sets that library as the default to open when you launch the app. (You can have several different libraries on your computer if you wish.)
When you're satisfied that your library is safely moved (and you have a backup of your library), then you can delete the original Photos Library from your internal drive and eventually macOS will make available the space that the library was occupying.
This is Apple's guidance for moving the Photos Library to an external drive:
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Assuming you want to back up the photos themselves, not the Photos Database, do the following:
This will export all the photos in your Photos Library.
If you haven't done this before, I suggest a trial run where you select & export just a few photos to see how it works before you try to export all the photos from your Library.
Note: I have never used the Hidden feature, so there may be a possibility you may need to unhide the hidden photos album and export it by itself.
For more information, see Export photos, videos, slideshows, and memories in Photos on Mac - Apple Support
Thanks for the fast response. Will try the transfer.
You're welcome. ☺️
Backing up all photo from a iMac 14.7.8 to External HD
