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iPhone says not enough storage but there is

I have iCloud enabled to upload my photos but it is stuck uploading and the message "Not enough iPhone storage" is shown. I however still have 2.3GB storage available on my device.

What can I do to resolve this?



​[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone 6s Plus

Posted on Oct 16, 2019 4:59 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 28, 2020 2:59 PM

I am having the same issue. What I have noticed is my “other storage” is going up. I’m losing gigs cause of it. I keep getting an alert saying not enough storage so I paid for more storage in iCloud. But my photos won’t upload. Also, since this has been happening my apps have been force closing. This has been the biggest annoyance I’ve have had with iPhone.

33 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 28, 2020 2:59 PM in response to laurens131

I am having the same issue. What I have noticed is my “other storage” is going up. I’m losing gigs cause of it. I keep getting an alert saying not enough storage so I paid for more storage in iCloud. But my photos won’t upload. Also, since this has been happening my apps have been force closing. This has been the biggest annoyance I’ve have had with iPhone.

Feb 24, 2020 8:40 AM in response to laurens131

Same issue here.


2TB icloud plan

256 GB iphone 11 Pro max with over 128GB space free on the phone.


I contstantly get not enough space warning for uploading photos. Besides that nearly all my photos and videos, even ones shot just 24 hours before, require pulling down from iCloud. It's like the phone doesn't recognize it has 128 GB of space to use as cache for photos.


Super annoying. Please fix.

Jul 25, 2020 3:33 PM in response to laurens131

Hi... I was facing the same issue with my girlfriend’s phone. We upgraded her iCloud to 50GB plan, cleared 1GB on her phone, but kept getting the same error.


I tried a few different things, like disabling iCloud and reenabling, restarting phone to clear cache, etc, but nothing worked.


The last of my attempts, which finally made it start working, was by deleting and disabling the backup data/job. After doing that, the Photos started syncing.


Will reenable backup (which hadn’t run since 2018) after photos are all uploaded.

Oct 27, 2019 8:51 AM in response to laurens131

Hi laurens131,


Thanks for getting back to us. Do you have Optimize Storage turned on from Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Photos? If not, that may help with saving space on the iPhone by uploading the full-resolution version of your photos and videos to iCloud, while keeping a space saving version on the device.


If you're still running in to the alert with that feature already enabled, you'll need to make more space available on the device in order to get iCloud Photos uploading:


How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support


Take care.

Jan 31, 2020 3:39 PM in response to gretrick

I have an 11 Pro Max that I just updated to the latest os and I have over a TB free in the cloud and 30gb free on local storage and it still says I’m full despite having so much extra space. And yeah I got optimize iPhone storage on but apparently to fix it there is a “reserve copy” that needs to be turned off to fix it but that discussion is closed so I can’t ask them to specify what exactly they mean by that



There was a separate discussion about this here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250664207


Here is my phone

Oct 22, 2019 8:40 AM in response to laurens131

Hello laurens131,


Thank you for using Apple Support Communities! I understand that you have turned on iCloud Photos on your iPhone, however you're encountering an alert indicating that you do not have enough iPhone storage, and your photos are no longer uploading from the iPhone to iCloud Photos. I would be happy to help provide steps to take next.


Do you have iCloud Photos enabled on another device? If so, it's possible that the size of your iCloud Photos exceeds the amount of storage available on your iPhone. The following support article provides some suggestions to help check and manage your storage space on both the iPhone and in iCloud:


Manage your photo and video storage - Apple Support


Let us know what happens after trying those steps.


Cheers!

Jun 28, 2020 3:52 PM in response to GonzalesM814

I noticed my “other storage” had increased more each day. Every time I offloaded apps to free up space it would increase. Got up to 25GBs before I reset my phone. I read that if your other is above 10gb there are probably corrupt files occurring. I backed up everything on iTunes using an encrypted backup then erased and reset the iPhone and restored to the backup I saved in iTunes. This resolved my issue and now my other is steady at 3gb and I have 20gb of free space with the same installs as before.

iPhone says not enough storage but there is

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