Permanently deleting photos
My iPhone storage was nearing its 64 GB capacity, with about 25 GB taken up by photos, so I disabled iCloud photo syncing and deleted *all* photos and videos stored on my iPhone. I then permanently deleted all "recently deleted" items, checked everywhere else I thought any photos or videos might be hiding and eventually deleted everything I could find on my device that's not an app. I restarted the device, updated to the newest iOS version and restarted again, and did all the other things they tell you to do to ensure that the photos and videos are actually gone from the device. And yet, the phone tells me I have almost exactly the same amount of storage available, and photos are still taking up 22.43 GB of space. The photo app has 22.43 GB listed under "documents and data." I can't find any way of emptying any kind of cache associated with the app. Of course, Apple won't let me delete the photo app itself, so I can't do it that way. I have waited 24 hours now to see if the phone will automatically clean up whatever garbage related to photos is *still* on the phone for some nonsensical reason, and nothing has happened.
I've done everything one could reasonably be expected to do to get rid of my photos and videos. I'm at my wit's end. All the trouble I went through to get rid of 25 GB of material on my phone has done virtually nothing to alleviate the storage problem, and to add insult to injury, my phone is still bothering me with the warning that my storage is almost full, and that I should sync photos with iCloud to save space, even though I know that would do exactly the opposite at this point!
I've seen this same issue posted on the forums here a dozen times and not one of the responses is helpful. I can't stand how many times "community experts" copy and paste how-tos straight from Apple that completely miss the point. Before replying please confirm that what you're sharing is (1) relevant and (2) not something I've just said I already tried. I'm not an idiot. If I could have easily found the answer in any other way I would not be posting here.
I must add, I was on board with iCloud early on and didn't mind having less storage on my device in exchange for buying more storage on iCloud and keeping a minimal amount of content on the device itself, but I am extremely frustrated that Apple has made it so difficult to operate this way. I've had the "optimize photos" feature toggled on since it came out, figuring that would drastically cut down on space taken up by photos and videos, but it definitely has not. Even with that option selected, photos and videos were (and are) still allowed to take up 25 GB of space on the device. How is that optimized? I don't want 25 GB stored on my phone. That's the whole reason I chose to sync with icloud and "optimize" photo storage.
iPhone 12 mini, iOS 16
