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The Apple Photos app is using a ridiculous amount of storage. I have iCloud+ but the amount of storage being used on my iPad and iPhone by the photos app is way too much. How do I restrict the amount of storage the photos app uses?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iPad Pro, iPadOS 18
See the following from Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support
Turn on Optimize Storage
iCloud Photos keeps all your photos and videos in their original, high-resolution version. To save storage space on your device, you can turn on Optimize Storage.
If you turn on Optimize Storage, iCloud Photos automatically manages the size of your library on your device. Your original photos and videos are stored in iCloud and space-saving versions are kept on your device. Your library is optimized only when you need space, starting with the photos and videos you access least. You can download the original photos and videos over Wi-Fi or cellular when you need them.
If you turn on Download Originals, iCloud Photos keeps your original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud and on your device.
On your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Vision Pro
PhotoLogic wrote: … Selecting Optimize Mac Storage in Settings of the Photos app creates a smaller version of the original photo on the iPad, iPhone, and Mac when storage on the device gets low and keeps the most recent, full resolution, in the iCloud?
atulya16 was talking about an iPhone, and you've shown the iCloud Settings window for the Mac, but this is essentially correct. The difference is that with a Mac it's possible to make backup copies of the Library, either by copying the Library directly to an external drive or by using Time Machine to make incremental backups (or both, which is better.) But with "Optimize Mac Storage" turned on, those copies may not be backing up original files, but just smaller versions, so a backup isn't backing up at all. I keep my iPhone set to "Optimize," but I don't use "Optimize" on my Mac. On my Mac I choose "Download Originals."
Of course, for some, there may not be enough room. In that case, we use an external drive. Storing the Photos Library on a carefully Mac-formatted drive works great.
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
But on a MacBook, where an external drive is unplugged for mobility, a Photos Library may have problems. So we move some of our other files on an external drive so that we can have enough room on the internal drive to hold the Photos Library. We may even use multiple Libraries, and keep only a Favorites Library, which is connected to iCloud, on the internal drive
Richard ~
Selecting Optimize Mac Storage in Settings of the Photos app creates a smaller version of the original photo on the iPad, iPhone, and Mac when storage on the device gets low and keeps the most recent, full resolution, in the iCloud?
I have done this already buts it’s terribly ineffective. I don’t need 50+ GB of photos on my iPad. I have over 80,000 photos in my library and I’m happy for them to sit reliably in the cloud rather than on my iPad. Why wouldn’t the storage be optimised so that photos are intelligently stored between the device and the cloud ? Google photos handles this much better.
iCloud Photos is a "synchronization service." Its purpose is to keep all the pictures on your iPhone, your Mac, your iPad, and at iCloud.com always exactly the same. As much as possible, iCloud makes it easy to edit pictures on your phone (or other device) and have the edits show up everywhere, without ever changing the original image. This isn't necessarily what other cloud services offer. If that is not what you want, then you may need to consider an alternate service.
How do I restrict the amount of storage Photos app uses?
