How to Clear the Photos App Cache on Mac

The Photos app on Mac is unique among storage culprits because most of its data isn’t cache at all — it’s your actual photos. But Photos does cache a substantial amount of derived data: thumbnails, previews, rendered edits, face recognition data. On a 100GB photo library, those caches can hit 10-15GB on their own.

Here’s what’s safe to clear and what isn’t on macOS Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15.

Where Photos stores everything

Your library is a single bundle file, usually at ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/. Right-click and choose Show Package Contents to look inside. Key folders:

• originals/ — your actual photos and videos. Don’t delete these.
• resources/ — derived data: thumbnails, previews, rendered edits. Mostly safe to clear.
• database/ — the catalog database. Don’t delete this.
• private/com.apple.Photos.PreviewMaker/ — render queue and temporary preview data
• caches/ — face recognition, scene analysis, and other ML caches

System-level Photos cache also lives at:

• ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos/Data/Library/Caches/ — sandbox cache

What’s safe to clear

Always safe:

• ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos/Data/Library/Caches/ — sandbox cache, regenerates automatically.

Mostly safe (rebuild required, takes time):

• The resources/derivatives/ folder inside the photoslibrary bundle. Clearing this forces Photos to regenerate every thumbnail and preview, which can take hours on a large library.
• Face recognition cache. Photos will re-run analysis, taking hours.

Don’t touch:

• Anything in the originals/ folder.
• The database/ folder.
• The library bundle itself, as a whole.

Clearing the sandbox cache

Easy, safe, fast:

1. Quit Photos.
2. Open Finder, press Cmd+Shift+G.
3. Paste ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos/Data/Library/Caches/.
4. Move everything inside to the Trash.
5. Empty Trash.

Photos will regenerate this cache on next launch. Usually recovers a few hundred MB to 1-2GB.

Optimize Mac Storage (the real solution)

If your Photos library is huge and you have iCloud Photos:

1. Open Photos.
2. From the menu bar, click Photos → Settings.
3. Click the iCloud tab.
4. Choose Optimize Mac Storage.

Photos will keep only optimized versions of older photos locally. Full-resolution stays in iCloud. Your library on disk shrinks dramatically — sometimes by 50-80% — while remaining fully usable. Tapping a photo redownloads the full-res version on demand.

This requires sufficient iCloud storage to hold your full library.

Rebuilding the Photos library

If Photos is acting weird — duplicate thumbnails, missing previews, slow performance — rebuilding the library can help:

1. Quit Photos.
2. Hold Option+Cmd while clicking the Photos app icon.
3. The Library Repair dialog appears.
4. Click Repair.

Photos rebuilds its database and regenerates thumbnails. Takes minutes to hours depending on library size. No photos lost.

Reclaiming space from “Recently Deleted”

Photos keeps deleted items for 30 days in the Recently Deleted album. They count against your storage.

1. Open Photos.
2. In the sidebar, click Recently Deleted.
3. Click Delete All (top right) to permanently remove them now.

This frees up real space immediately rather than waiting for the 30-day auto-delete.

Skip the manual huntSweep clears every cache across every app in one pass — Slack, Spotify, Discord, browsers, and the rest. Download Sweep free →

What about old library bundles you’ve stopped using?

If you’ve migrated between Photos libraries (or imported from old iPhoto or Aperture libraries), the old bundles might still be sitting in ~/Pictures/. They’re often dozens of GB each.

To check:

1. Open ~/Pictures/ in Finder.
2. Look for .photoslibrary, .aplibrary (Aperture), or iPhoto Library.photoslibrary files.
3. Right-click → Get Info to check size.

If you’ve fully migrated and don’t need the old library, you can delete it. Make sure you’ve exported anything you need first — old library bundles are often the only place certain photos exist.

The PreviewMaker folder

Inside the photoslibrary bundle: private/com.apple.Photos.PreviewMaker/. This is where Photos queues up preview generation work. On a recently imported library, this folder can be several GB while previews are still being made.

Once preview generation is complete, this folder shrinks. If it stays huge for weeks, something’s stuck. Quitting Photos and force-rebuilding the library (Option+Cmd while launching) usually resets it.

Face recognition cache

Photos uses on-device ML to identify people in your photos. The face recognition cache can be a few GB on libraries with thousands of photos.

If you don’t use the People feature or want to reset it:

1. Photos → Settings → iCloud → uncheck Sync this Mac for People (if available).
2. Or delete private/com.apple.PersonalPlanning/ inside the photoslibrary bundle (advanced — requires showing package contents and editing inside).

The cache regenerates if you re-enable People recognition. Fully safe but heavy-handed.

There’s a faster waySweep finds and clears caches across every app you use, all at once. Try Sweep free →

Don’t delete these

To be very clear, these are off-limits:

• The photoslibrary bundle as a whole.
• Anything in originals/ inside the bundle.
• The database/ folder inside the bundle.
• Photos that haven’t been backed up elsewhere.

Photos library data is often irreplaceable. Cache is regenerable. Know which is which before you delete anything inside the bundle.

How much space can a cache clear actually recover?

Realistic numbers:

• Sandbox cache (~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos): 200MB - 2GB
• Library derivatives folder: 1-10GB depending on library size
• Face recognition cache: 500MB - 3GB
• Recently Deleted permanent purge: depends on what you’ve deleted

The biggest wins come from:

1. Enabling iCloud Photos with Optimize Mac Storage (saves the most).
2. Permanently emptying Recently Deleted.
3. Removing old library bundles.

How often to clean

If using iCloud with Optimize Mac Storage: rarely. iCloud handles most of it.

If not using iCloud: review storage every 6-12 months. The sandbox cache is fine to clear opportunistically.

After major imports: rebuild the library if previews look weird.

Worth automating?

Photos is the kind of app where you really want to know what’s about to be deleted before it happens. Cache vs. content blurs more than with most apps.

Sweep handles the safe cache pieces — sandbox cache, app-level temporary files — without touching the photoslibrary bundle itself. For the bigger questions (move to iCloud, delete old library bundles, purge Recently Deleted), you’ll want to make those calls yourself with Photos open in front of you.

Bottom line

Photos cache lives in two places: the sandbox cache at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos/Data/Library/Caches/ (always safe to clear), and the resources folder inside the photoslibrary bundle (mostly safe but rebuilds take time).

The single biggest space win for Photos isn’t a cache clear — it’s enabling iCloud Photos with Optimize Mac Storage. That alone can recover 50%+ of your photo library’s local footprint.