Reduce iPhone 12 Photos proxy image size

Question

Reduce iPhone 12 Photos proxy image size

Hi, my wife's iPhone 12 only has 64Gb of memory (that seemed fine when she bought it), however she can no longer update the OS as she only has 10Gb free.

Photos app is the biggest culprit with 27Gb of images, despite using iCloud sync and optimising iPhone storage. That 27Gb is spread across close to 27,000 images and videos, meaning the lower res placeholders still on the phone are about 1Mb each, which seems like a lot. Is there a way of reducing the file size of these proxy images?

Posted on Dec 15, 2025 4:29 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 15, 2025 7:51 AM in response to dyrckfromchristchurch

For comparison my iPhone has 17000 pictures and uses 5.7 GB for Photos about 350KB/picture (0.35 MB/pic.) My phone has 128GB of storage. I almost never use my phone to edit pictures, which requres the original files to be loaded locally, so this is about what you get with only thumbnails, previews, and the database. If you zoom in a lot, print, export, or edit, then the larger files will be requred.

Optimize Storage gives you the best possible reduction in picture storage-- there's nothing to make smaller except the number of pictures at iCloud Photos.

To avoid big troubles, you need to keep at least 10% of the storage free. The OS uses that space to manipulate files, and you it gets much fuller, then even deleting files becomes a problem. Honestly, having only 64GB will be harder and harder. You may need to look at getting rid of some apps that require lots of storage.

Do you use a Mac? Macs can have multiple Photos Libraries. So I put only my Favorites in the Library that I share with my phone and iPad-- that's why it's only 17k pictures.

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Answer 2

Dec 15, 2025 9:17 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

Thank you for your observations. My wife certainly won't have done any editting on her phone nor printed many out. She does have a Mac too, plus we share each other's libraries. I was going to get stuck into remove near duplicates anyway, now I have a better reason to do so.

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Answer 3

Dec 15, 2025 9:37 AM in response to dyrckfromchristchurch

It would take a lot of duplicates to make much of a dent. Does she use Optimize on the Mac? If she does, then here's a way to backup the full set of pictures to an external drive:

Backup iCloud Photos with an Optimized Mac - Apple Community

Once that fills (it could take awhile) and is disconnected from iCloud, then you could delete the pictures at iCloud.com and make a new System Library with selected pictures.

Those of us who use multiple Libraries depend on the trusted 3rd party app PowerPhotos ($40) to manage the Libraries, easily transferring pictures and albums between Libraries.

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