You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
I have 2T on iCloud storage, and most of that space is empty. But I am always having issues with my phone being “out of storage.” My photos are set to “optimize iPhone storage” and go to the cloud, but it keeps taking up my iPhone storage instead.
I am also not allowed to update my phone because I “don’t have enough storage.”
how do I fix this issue to actually start using my iCloud storage instead of my iPhone?
iPhone 12, iOS 17
Thanks but I already have the setting to optimize photos on. So even if that setting is on, it will still take up my iPhone storage?
Then what is the point of paying for iCloud if you are still limited by the iPhone storage and can’t even use my iCloud storage?
Yes. Photos will always be on device. Optimizing will save a considerable amount of space; my library on device is about 20 percent the size of the actual library. iCloud is a synchronization service. Your photos will sync across your devices.
When "Optimize iPhone Storage" is enabled on your iPhone, then your iPhone has the option of reducing the resolution of some photos when it sees that storage is running short. It won't reduce any photo or video to zero size, though. It will keep enough data for each photo to display it at some minimum size (not documented), then will reload the full resolution when needed to edit the photo, print it, or blow up details. The ability to reload the full resolution is where the full copy on iCloud is necessary.
Another point of iCloud Photo storage (perhaps the main point for some of us) is to synchronize one photo library among multiple devices (iPhone, iPad, MacBook, maybe a desktop Mac).
What is the status of your iCloud syncing? Is the iPhone still showing "Uploading" or what is it showing?
As Mark explained, even optimized photos and videos will need minimum size locally on your iPhone, as an estimate roughly 10% of the full size of the photo. So the available storage on your iPhone determines how large your iCloud Photos Library can be.
For example - if you can afford to use 50GB of photos and videos locally on your iPhone, you can let the iCloud Photos Library grow up to 500GB, but not larger.
Your photos will be both on your device and in iCloud. You can optimize storage at settings > photos. If you need to free space on your device you'll need to delete content
Photos are not saving on the cloud when they should be
