Mac Move Imovie Library

An iMovie library holds all the media and data used to make movies in iMovie. If your iMovie library is large and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, you can move your iMovie library to an external drive.

Before you move an iMovie library, it's a good idea to back up your Mac.

Moving your library to an external hard drive doesn’t affect any iMovie Theater content that you have moved to iCloud.

Prepare your drive

You can store your library on an external storage device such as a USB Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Apple doesn’t recommend storing iMovie libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives shared on a network.

How To Delete Imovie Library

Nov 21, 2019 Move your iMovie for Mac library. To save space on your Mac, you can move your iMovie library to an external hard drive. An iMovie library holds all the media and data used to make movies in iMovie. If your iMovie library is large and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, you can move your iMovie library to an external drive.

Imovie

You can’t store your library on an external drive or other disc used for Time Machine back-ups.

Move a library to an external storage device

Move Imovie Library

  1. Quit iMovie.
  2. Select your external drive in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info.
  3. If the information in Sharing & Permissions isn’t visible, click the triangle , then make sure that the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' tickbox is selected. If it's not selected, click the lock icon to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, and then select the tickbox.
  4. Click your desktop to make sure that you’re in the Finder, then choose Go > Home from the menu bar at the top of your screen.
  5. Open the Movies folder, then drag the file named iMovie Library to your external hard drive.
  6. When the library file has finished copying to your external drive, double-click the library file on the external drive to open it in iMovie. If an alert appears asking you to give iMovie access to a removable volume, click OK.
    If you clicked Don't Allow, in the Finder choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Security and Privacy, then click Privacy. Click Files and Folders in the sidebar, then select 'Removable Volumes' under iMovie.
  7. Make sure that the library you moved contains all your media, then drag the original file from your Movies folder on your Mac to the Trash.

If you disconnect the external drive

When your external drive is connected to your Mac, the library you moved to the external drive opens automatically in iMovie. If you disconnect the external drive containing the library, iMovie opens to a new, empty library created in the Movies folder on your Mac. iMovie automatically saves any projects you create and media that you import in the new library.

If you want to open the library you moved to an external drive, you can open it after you reconnect the external drive. You can then move clips, events and projects between libraries.

You may have existing video that you want to use in your final blockbuster — video that’s already on your Mac’s hard drive or SSD. Perhaps it’s a project you previously created in iMovie (the old version), or video from a digital still or camera phone that resides in iPhoto. Or maybe you want to incorporate video on a CD or DVD.

Mac Move Imovie Library To Imac Movie Library

To import iMovie projects or other videos on your hard drive (or other disks) from Finder, select a file or cmd+click to select multiple files and drag them from Finder to the Event in the Libraries list in iMovie. By the way, these files need not be just video files; as you’ll discover, you can grab photos and audio files, too.

As an alternative, you can import media by clicking the Import button on the toolbar and selecting content in the Devices section of the Sidebar. You can also summon the Import window by choosing File→Import Media.

Videos that you’ve already downloaded to your iPhoto library are readily accessible in iMovie. At the top of the iMovie Sidebar is a Libraries list, which is essentially the content library at your moviemaking disposal.

iMovie automatically supplies a library for iPhoto, and for Apple’s Aperture as well, assuming that you own that program too. Merely click iPhoto Library in the list, and choose the Event you want. The only caveat is that the video must be in a compatible iMovie format.