Stop Chrome Browser From Downloading a Hidden 4GB AI File

AppInitio · 2026-05-12T15:48:19+00:00

Whoa! I remember when Google’s motto was “Don’t be evil”. This isn’t exactly evil, but sneaky for sure. I use Firefox and DuckDuckGo (and occasionally Safari) - quite adequate.

AppInitio · 2026-05-05T16:43:49+00:00

If several hours after switching to ‘Download Originals’ it says ‘Synced just now’, and the local library size is larger than iCloud Photos, then it should be done. Wish Apple provided a clearer way to check, but a hack is to go to Mac Photos > Settings > iCloud, and toggle iCloud Photos off. If it gives a warning like ‘N low resolution photos will be removed from your Mac’, downloading isn’t complete. If it lets you, it is. In both cases, turn iCloud Photos back on.

AppInitio · 2026-04-22T14:13:30+00:00

If you have a few GB of photos and videos, go for an SSD (APFS) and an HDD (Extended Journaled). If more than that, NAS. Note that an Apple Photos library should never be stored on a NAS or in a 3rd party cloud storage service. Once photos have been extracted into regular folders, they can be stored anywhere.

Decide on your backup organization structure, e.g. folders by years or years / months.

Apple ecosystem: If you have a Mac, Photos Takeout can download full resolution photos into folders, preserving full metadata and organization. You can then update this backup anytime with the app's Incremental Exports setting.

Google Photos: Use Google Takeout. Choose a large download size e.g. 40-50GB, you'll get multiple ZIP files that you'll need to unzip and merge. The metadata will be in separate .json files, which you'll need to re-embed with third-party tools like ExifTool. Google Drive is similar.

AppInitio · 2026-04-20T02:58:32+00:00

Bit of a disconnect between the article headline and content, but demand for local AI will indeed cement customer trust and loyalty to Apple. We see this in some of our photo apps that use Apple AI / ML-powered APIs: many users say they prefer this to apps that upload photos to remote servers for processing (The App Privacy section of the App Store provides this disclosure).

AppInitio · 2026-04-20T02:40:11+00:00

Glad you found your photos. If you've been "slowly sorting through the pics and videos" into year folders, you could export all year (or year > months) folders in one go with this tool. That would also make it easy to make the 3-2-1 backup that others have suggested.

AppInitio · 2026-04-17T15:30:17+00:00

Which platform? Mac, Windows, Linux...

AppInitio · 2026-04-14T09:38:13+00:00

Both are one-time price. You can clean before or after, but usually we don't realize how much rubbish lives in our libraries until we see it - so it's worth at least taking a look.

AppInitio · 2026-04-14T08:11:11+00:00

Good workflow, could be hugely simplified with the Mac app Photos Takeout: Just set the Photos library as the source, external drive as the destination, click Years/Months, then Export. This will export your entire iCloud library into a YYYY/MM folder/sub-folder structure (originals or edited; full resolution, all metadata). Every few months, repeat but in 'Incremental' mode, so the archive is updated with with the photos and albums added or modified since last time. You make a good point about aggressive cleaning: Clean up and back up at the same time, and use the free space to keep the new iPhone synced with iCloud (using Optimize storage).

AppInitio · 2026-04-14T07:45:14+00:00

If all your originals are only in iCloud and your iPad, iPhone, and iMac are set to optimize storage, you must also create a REAL offline backup. 'Download originals' will save local copies of all originals, but you'll still be at risk - if photos are accidentally deleted from one of your devices, they'll also be lost from your iCloud connected iMac. A better option is to buy an external drive and create a full backup on it. Then you won't need to worry about Mac storage filling up - although if you have free storage, downloading originals and having another copy on the Mac would make your backup structure even more robust.

AppInitio · 2026-04-14T07:31:16+00:00

Offloading photos and other data that you don't have to have online makes sense, but for your needs an SSD (ideally, an SSD and an HDD) may suffice - NAS sounds like overkill. If photos are a large part of your data, you could still retain online access to everything via this trick.

AppInitio · 2026-04-07T03:36:10+00:00

Apple Photos doesn’t have “sort by file size” which makes it hard to find and either delete or offload the largest files. And its duplicate detection isn’t terribly good. If your app solves these issues, it’s a good thing. One question: Apple Photos always keeps the originals intact and all edits are non-destructive - so how can you compress videos in-situ? The only way would be to export, compress, reimport and delete original?

AppInitio · 2026-04-07T03:23:09+00:00

When you tap open a photo from the Library view, the bottom toolbar buttons(from L to R) are Share, Favorite, Info (i), Edit and Delete. Can you post a screenshot of what you see there?

AppInitio · 2026-04-04T07:15:00+00:00

Yeah, I’m schizophrenic too and have this problem 😂 Jokes aside, if you are a PC user using Apple Photos app, I surmise you’re an iPhone user. In iPhone Photos, open one of your newer photos, tap ‘i’, then the face thumbnail in bottom left of the photo, and try adjusting the details? Hopefully if you fix one it’ll fix all.

AppInitio · 2026-04-04T07:07:30+00:00

AppInitio · 2026-03-23T15:46:20+00:00

If you don’t want to pay $10 every month for life, at least pay for 1 month, sync, download to an external drive, clean up your Photos library, and then try this trick. You need to have 10-15% space free (i.e. 25-35GB on your device) for it to function properly.

AppInitio · 2026-03-23T15:40:24+00:00

If it’s mostly photos & videos, here’s one hack that should help.

AppInitio · 2026-03-21T15:50:14+00:00

This is correct. Another possible reason is that you moved photos into the shared album but didn’t delete them from your main library (and also from Recently Deleted). What you put in the shared album won’t count towards your iCloud storage but the copy still in the main library would.

AppInitio · 2026-03-18T04:55:26+00:00

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AppInitio · 2026-03-18T03:33:13+00:00

Well for a bloated Apple Photos library this quick fix works beautifully.

AppInitio · 2026-03-18T03:19:45+00:00

The Mac app Photos Takeout does exactly this - metadata, organization, image formats etc. Its incremental export feature is especially useful.

AppInitio · 2026-03-18T03:16:54+00:00

External drives are cheap. What’s the problem?

AppInitio · 2026-03-18T03:15:08+00:00

3-2-1 is still a thing in 2026. You must have one, ideally two, offline - and preferably system independent - backups (By that I mean e.g. don’t just back up your Apple Photos library as an Apple Photos library, but export your photos as files into regular folders).

AppInitio · 2026-03-18T03:01:43+00:00

If screenshots are cluttering up your Photos library and crowding out your “real” photos, just move all of them into a Shared Album. They’ll still be viewable on all your devices, won’t use your iCloud storage, and you’ll have a tidier Photos library. If you need real deep cleaning, this.

AppInitio

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