I’ve already subscribed to iCloud+ and turned on photo sync, but why is 18GB of my device storage still being used by photos? is it because i own some of shared album?
[Edited by Moderator]
Original Title: Photos storage
iPhone 15, iOS 18
Navigate to Settings>Your Name>iCloud>Photos - Ensure that "Optimize iPhone Storage" is toggled on.
With this setting turned on, your iPhone will offload local copies of your photos to iCloud to save local storage.
Note that this feature does not happen instantly and may take some time. Turn "Optimize iPhone Storage" on and check back after letting your iPhone sit overnight.
It's not clear what you situation is and what you're asking. For instance, how many pictures do you have? For some Libraries, 19GB would be normal, and for some that'd be really out there. Which is it?
What does your Photos Library look like at iCloud.com? Are all the pictures there? How much storage is used there?
In Settings>[name]>iCloud>Photos, have you turned on "Optimize Storage?"
If you set a device to "Optimize Storage," then Photos may store only smaller images on the device and rely on iCloud to keep the full sized images. This is great, since with the lower resolution images you can scan through pictures very quickly, and they look great on the screen. And, if Optimize is chosen, and you want to edit or crop a picture, Photos will reach out to iCloud to get a full sized image for you to work with. An optimized Library may take up less than 20% of the space of a fully downloaded Library. On my iPhone, Photos takes up way less than 10% of the space it uses on my Mac.
Be sure to keep at least 13 GB free on you phone. Passing 115 GB will begin to cause crazy stuff to happen.
Let us know…
Thank you for your reply!
To clarify, my iCloud Photos Library is currently using 131GB of storage, while previously, the Photos app on my iPhone was only using around 5GB, and recently it increased to 18GB, even though I have “Optimize iPhone Storage” turned on . I checked on iCloud.com, and yes, all my pictures are still there, nothing is missing. I understand that with the Optimize option, photos on the device should take up much less space, so I’m wondering why the storage usage on my iPhone jumped so much all of a sudden, even though I haven’t downloaded full-size images or changed any settings. I still have plenty of free space on my iPhone, but I’d like to understand why the storage use increased so drastically.
any ideas?
Thank you for your reply!
To clarify, my iCloud Photos Library is currently using 131GB of storage, while previously, the Photos app on my iPhone was only using around 5GB, and recently it increased to 18GB, even though I have “Optimize iPhone Storage” turned on. I still have plenty of free space on my iPhone, but I’d like to understand why the storage use increased so drastically.
any ideas?
garegero wrote: … I still have plenty of free space on my iPhone, but I’d like to understand why the storage use increased so drastically.
"Optimize" reduces the storage space on your phone "as needed." Photos tries to keep stuff locally on the phone, especially things that are used pretty often. For instance, if you edit a picture, it will retrieve the original from iCloud Photos and, when you're through, it doesn't erase the original unless the storage is needed. This makes experience with Optimize Photos more transparent, so there aren't long delays. So, if you have "plenty of room," then there's no problem. You may see the total Photos storage expand and contract.
And here's a very special point: those numbers are estimates-- the iPhone doesn't want to be calculating those things all the time and slowing your work down. The numbers just aren't precise. As Captain Barbosa would say, "They're more like guidelines, anyway."
iCloud+ photo sync not freeing up storage on iPhone
