Apple One storage is full. I want to erase 10,000 photos synched to an iPhone from Aperture on a 2014 27" iMac. Can you help me restart the iMac or clear Photo's 'From a Mac' albums?

Four family members are sharing 250GB of iCloud storage and I've been getting almost full messages for some weeks.


One of the iPhones we use has all these photos synched from the old iMac. I can't see a way to erase them on the iPhone and last night after hours of trying I managed to get the iMac to start. I plugged in a copy of the Aperture library on an external HD and used iTunes to switch off the sync for photos from the Aperture library.


It looked good. iTunes started creating a back up of the entire iPhone to the 2014 iMac and I saw it start to sync minus the photos. It was 4AM and I left it to finish the job and went to bed. In the morning before I'd had a chance to check the results, my daughter unplugged her iPhone and went to work. The iMac's screen was black and unresponsive and remained that way until I unplugged it. When I next had a chance to check the Photos app on my daughter's iPhone I found that the 10,000 photo album was still there.


I've tried unplugging the iMac and pushing various Apple-recommended keyboard combinations, pauses and despite endless Power plug pushing the 2014 iMac just won't restart to give me another chance to sync the iPhone.


Before any of this was attempted I took a complete back up of the iPhone to a 2021 M1 iMac.


I'd appreciate any advice regarding possible ways to restart the old iMac or somehow erase the bloated 'From a Mac' Photos folder(s).

Thank you.

iMac 27″

Posted on Aug 1, 2023 07:10 AM

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Posted on Aug 1, 2023 10:12 AM

The quickest way to erase all "from my Mac" albums on an iPhone is to enable iCloud Photos on the iPhone, just temporarily. The iPhone will erase all photos synced from a Mac, because hey are not compatible with iCloud Photos. Once the synced photos have been erased, you can disable iCloud Photos again.

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Aug 1, 2023 03:32 PM in response to léonie

Thank you Léonie,

You’ve been so generous with your expertise over many years. It is much appreciated!

That solution to the problem sounds very promising. My daughter is away for a few days but as soon as I can get hold of the phone I’ll follow your advice. I’ve only recently understood that I can achieve the same thing (sharing family photos) by using ‘Shared Albums’. There are limits on the number of albums and photos they hold but the key point is that their contents don’t count against our iCloud storage.

Thank you!

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Apple One storage is full. I want to erase 10,000 photos synched to an iPhone from Aperture on a 2014 27" iMac. Can you help me restart the iMac or clear Photo's 'From a Mac' albums?

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