Deleted photos from MacBook but storage space not reclaimed

Solution 1:

Did you empty Trash (Recycle Bin for Mac) (After moving your files to the external HDD?

If you have Time Machine setup on your primary HDD (where your OS X is setup), setup it up on another HDD (External HDD).

Solution 2:

Photos has its own Photos trash, so when you remove pictures, they don't go to the normal trash bin, but to the Photos trash within the app. So as you delete pictures you don't reduce the size of the app until you empty the Photos trash.

This was making my crazy until i figured it out!

On the current Photos app, the Recently Deleted folder is available from the left-hand folders pane. On earlier versions it's available from the File menu, under "Show Recently Deleted".

Solution 3:

Images or videos in Photos are firstly moved to folder Recently Deleted once deleted. Photos will automatically delete it permanently after 30 days. It is indeed an application level trash bin in Photos. There is a button, which allows you to delete items without waiting for the 30 days count down.

However, Photos does not reclaim disk spaces immediately after you empty the Recently Deleted folder. Keep Photos opened. It will reclaim disk spaces slowly. I believe that they are the image caches, thumbnails, indices for searching and all other metadata files being cleaned up in the background. So, if you are on a MacBook, connect to the ac power and just don't put your MacBook and hard disks on sleep.

Alternatively, if you have already moved the entire library and just clean up the whole, close Photos first. Hold down key option and invoke Photos again. Choose Create New... to create a blank Photos library. Then close Photos. With Finder, delete the old "Photos Library.photoslibrary" and rename your blank library with that directory name.

I'm running High Sierra and having Time Machine backups. This works for me.