How can I free up iPhone 15 storage without losing photos?

Question

Level 1

4 points

How can I free up iPhone 15 storage without losing photos?

My IPhone 15 is out of storage and I’ve done all the suggested such as delete or offload unused apps, clear caches, and more. Im scared if I delete photos that I will lose them forever. How can I clean up storage on my IPhone and delete photos from phone but keep them in my ICloud or synced devices such as my Mac. Also I have Google photos that they’re backed up to but if I delete those I believe I’ll lose them too. Need more storage without losing everything!

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Freeing up IPhone 15 storage.

iPhone 15 Plus, iOS 18

Posted on Jul 10, 2025 07:56 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Ingo2711

Level 9

77,799 points

Jul 11, 2025 01:35 AM in response to Mollymac80

Sorry, but transferring the photos from iCloud to a separate location on your Mac or external drive, is the only way to save the photos without deleting them from the other devices which also use iCloud Photos.

Have a look at this article, explaining how to do that:

Archive or make copies of the information you store in iCloud - Apple Support

Reply

Answer 2

Jul 11, 2025 04:29 PM in response to Mollymac80

If you tried lots of methods, on freeing up storage, you can buy more storage with an iCloud+ subscription, or you can transfer photos onto a USB drive using a USB-C to USB adapter, which can be found at USB-C to USB Adapter - Apple (CA)

Reply

Answer 3

Jul 11, 2025 08:44 AM in response to Mollymac80

Here's the best thing to do, but If you use Optimize Storage on your Mac, don't do this, yet. More steps will be needed. Do you Optimize Photos?

Here's the thing: on a Mac you can have two (or more) Photos Libraries. So, the first thing you should do, now!, is get a hard drive and drag your Photos Library from the Pictures Folder on your Mac to the hard drive. Whew! Now that's backed up!

If you have room on your Mac, you should now make a duplicate (⌘D) of your Photos Library, and give it a name like Old Library or something. If you don't have enough room on your Mac to have two copies of your Library, then you'll have to rely on your hard drive copy for the Old Library.

Now it is safe to delete pictures in the original Library, and be comforted in the fact that you have another copy of all those pictures on the external hard drive and, if there's room, an Old Library copy on your Mac.

You can see the Old Pictures Library by just double clicking on it. You can go back to the New Library by double clicking on that. Only the New Library is connected to iCloud.

What do you think?

Reply