How to Clear the iMovie Library
iMovie is Apple's official video editing tool, and it is available in all modern versions of macOS. Plenty of users rely on it for simple video editing, but it can also be used to manipulate all sorts of media – for example, creating slideshows or cutting off audio clips. Depending on how much you work with iMovie, you may end up building a relatively large iMovie Library, which can take tens of gigabytes of space. Needless to say, these projects should be removed regularly to make sure you are not wasting your hard disk space for unnecessary content. But how do you clear the iMovie Library?
Where to Find iMovie Files?
You can go to Applications -> Finder and look for the following folders, which contain iMovie-related content – iMovie Projects, iMovie Events, iMovie Sharing, and iMovie Library. You may also find several iMovie Project folders, which have a special icon – these are the folders used to store data about separate projects. If you are certain that you do not have any unfinished business in iMovie, you can go ahead and delete this folders completely.
Purge iMovie Render Files through the App
Whenever you edit a video with iMovie, the application will present you with a preview, which combines the original footage alongside any of the edits you made. These previews tend to take a lot of space, and you may wish to remove them if you do not want to see the preview render. To do this, open iMovie -> Preferences and press the Delete button next to Render Files.
Move your iMovie Library
If your iMovie Library takes too much space but you do not want to delete it, then there is a solution, which might help you – move the library to an external hard drive. Make sure that the external drive uses one of the file systems that Mac supports – APFS or MacOS Extended.
Connect your external drive to your Mac desktop or laptop, and then find the iMovie Library window through Finder. Make sure that you have quit iMovie completely. Drag the iMovie Library folder to the external hard drive. Try to open the folder and approve all permissions that the iMovie Library asks for.
