iCloud Photos filling up my iPhone despite Optimize Storage enabled

Question

Level 1

4 points

iCloud Photos filling up my iPhone despite Optimize Storage enabled

Hi everyone!

I’m facing a recurring issue with iCloud Photos that has become quite unmanageable and I'm wondering if anyone could help.

So here is the deal:

My photo library currently takes up 2.21 TB in iCloud (I’m on the 6 TB plan).
On my 1 TB iPhone, the Photos app still occupies 967.06 GB, even though I have “Optimize iPhone Storage”turned on.
As a result, I have almost no free space left for apps, Notes, Voice Memos, etc. → my iPhone is basically unusable. At this point, even basic actions like moving photos to an external drive or another device are impossible, because the iPhone is so saturated it can’t perform these functions anymore.

I’ve read in multiple forums (including here and on Reddit) that with “Optimize iPhone Storage” enabled, the local library should only take about 10–20% of the total iCloud size. For example, some users say they have ~1 TB in iCloud and only 50–100 GB on their iPhone.

In my case, it has never worked like that. Over the years, iCloud Photos has always filled up my devices and forced me to upgrade capacity (128 → 256 → 512 → 1 TB).

Now I’m at the limit: even with 1 TB, everything is clogged, and for weeks I haven’t been able to use basic apps because there’s no storage left.

So my questions are:

Is this a known bug where “Optimize iPhone Storage” doesn’t actually purge local space?
Is there a way to force the iPhone to clear the photo cache and properly run in optimized mode?
Or does my library size (2.2 TB, ) exceed what the system can realistically handle on iPhone, even with 1 TB storage?

Thank you so much in advance for your help!!

I’m attaching screenshots of: