Glossary

External drive

An external drive is a drive you plug into your Mac rather than one built in. It is where Storage Studio moves folders and apps to free space on your Mac.

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An external drive is a drive you plug into your Mac — rather than the built-in disk inside it. In Storage Studio it is the place your folders and apps move to when you free up space.

You choose it in Set Up / Choose External Drive… in the More menu. The window lists the drives that are plugged in, shows their format and free space, and offers a short speed test. Storage Studio only accepts a drive that really is external. Drives formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended are accepted; an exFAT drive needs you to confirm a warning first; FAT32 and network drives are refused, because they can't hold the shortcuts a move leaves behind.

Anything you've moved there can only be opened while the drive is plugged in.

See also: Choosing an external drive · Setting up your drive · When your drive is disconnected

glossaryexternal drive

How do I move apps to an external drive on a Mac and still launch them?
Dragging an app to another drive can break it, because macOS expects it in /Applications. Storage Studio relocates the app to your external drive and leaves a shortcut in place, so it still launches normally from Launchpad, Spotlight, and the Dock — and you can move it back in one click.
How do I use an external SSD as extra storage on a MacBook?
Plug in a USB-C or Thunderbolt SSD and let Storage Studio pair it with your internal drive as one workspace. It moves big folders, libraries, and apps to the SSD with a shortcut left behind, so your MacBook behaves like it has a much bigger disk — fast enough to work directly off the external drive.
Can I move my Photos or Final Cut library to an external drive?
Yes — large Photos, Final Cut, and iMovie libraries are common space hogs. Storage Studio relocates them to an external drive while keeping them usable, leaving a shortcut so your apps still find them. Moving a folder to your fast drive keeps its files' modified and created dates, permissions,…
Will moving files to another drive break my apps or Spotlight?
Not the way Storage Studio does it. It leaves a shortcut (symlink) at the original location, so apps, Finder, and Spotlight resolve everything as if it never moved — and the move is fully reversible.

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