Mac and iCloud tips & tricks
How to Sort Apple Photos By File Size
The macOS app PhotoSort sorts your library by size and quality.
Problem: iCloud Storage is Full
You get that dreaded alert: iCloud Storage is Full. Photos and videos are no longer updating. Upgrade. Or else.
Your 200 GB iCloud storage is almost full, with photos and videos using 165 GB. You want to free up space but Apple Photos offers no way to sort by file size. You can only sort by Title and Date.
You’ve been paying $2.99 each month for 200GB of iCloud storage. The next tier is 2TB and costs $9.99 per month. Big jump. Why doesn’t Apple offer 500GB or 1TB? You don’t need 2TB of storage. You never will. Why should you shell out ten bucks a month for it?
Solution: Optimize iCloud Storage
When your Mac, iPhone, or iPad storage fill up, you flick on Optimize Mac (or iPhone, iPad) Storage — so what to do when your iCloud storage is full?
Optimize it! Here’s how:
- Set your slimming target, say about 15% of your current iCloud plan.
- Sort your Photos library by file size with the Mac app PhotoSort. It will create a SizeSort album in Photos listing all items by descending file size — so you can see which of them are taking up the most space.
- Look through SizeSort album to identify offloading candidates — items that you can archive on your Mac or an external drive. Export these, then delete them from Mac Photos and iCloud.
- PhotoSort also creates a QualitySort album. At its bottom you’ll find low-quality photos, screenshots, and images saved from the internet and social media. Identify and delete what you no longer need.
- Clear the Recently Deleted folder in Photos and the Trash on the Mac. Check free space. If below your slimming target, do a second pass.
Done! You now have more space across all your devices without upgrading your iCloud plan.
About PhotoSort
PhotoSort is a MacOS app that sorts the Mac and iCloud Photos library by file size and technical quality. The free version shows the 30 largest files, and the paid version ($4.99 for lifetime use) sorts the entire library. Here is the Mac App Store link.
The full sorting is saved in SizeSort and QualitySort albums in the Photos app. These albums can also be viewed on all iOS devices associated with the same iCloud account as the Mac.
