How to get photos on icloud to stop taking up space on my phone?

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Level 1

8 points

How to get photos on icloud to stop taking up space on my phone?

My phone is out of space and more than half of my phone's storage is taken up by my photos. All of my photos are up to date and automatically update on icloud.

My boyfriend's phone has it set up where he has almost 30,000 photos in his icloud and he can access all of them from his iphone, but they don't take up space on his phone.

I have about 5,000 photos and my phone has no more space. Eventhough they are on icloud I can not delete them off my phone because then it will delete them off icloud.

When I researched what I should do the only advice I could find was to have "optimize iphone storage" checked in my photos settings. However, my settings are already set up like this.

Does anyone know how I can get my phone set up like my boyfriend's? I have no more space on my phone and I need to be able to take photos and videos on my phone for my job. I've had important videos interrupted because of running out of space. I have deleted so many memories in order to have space on my phone.

How can I make it so my photos on icloud don't take up all of my iphone space?

iPhone XS, iOS 13

Posted on Apr 28, 2020 3:38 PM

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Answer 1

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Apr 28, 2020 6:33 PM in response to chrissiflam

He has over 34,000 photos/videos on his phone and they take up 2.5GB of storage,

Sorry... this is simply not possible using iCloud Photo Library. Even using optimization, these numbers are not achievable.

all he did was back up to icloud

If he is using the iCloud Photo Library, his photos are not also in his iCloud Backup. It's one or the other, but not both.

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Answer 2

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Apr 28, 2020 4:33 PM in response to chrissiflam

How can I make it so my photos on icloud don't take up all of my iphone space?

This is not possible while using the iCloud Photo Library to sync your photos.

iCloud is a syncing service, designed to keep your photo content the same on each subscribed device.

It is not off device storage.

If you enable optimization, this will reduce the amount of storage required in your phone. Since you say you have done this, you haver reached the maximum help optimize can offer. You must remove photos.

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Answer 3

chrissiflam Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 28, 2020 5:24 PM in response to LACAllen

So how is it that with my boyfriend's iphone he can access all his 30,000 photos which are on icloud and they don't take up any space on his phone? If I am understanding what your saying, the icloud doesn't let you take anything off your devices, it just makes it so you have all your photos on all devices?

thank you for your help by the way

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Answer 4

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Apr 28, 2020 5:55 PM in response to chrissiflam

So how is it that with my boyfriend's iphone he can access all his 30,000 photos which are on icloud and they don't take up any space on his phone? If I am understanding what your saying, the icloud doesn't let you take anything off your devices, it just makes it so you have all your photos on all devices?

Then he may be using a different app. Apple has no app that does what you are saying.

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Answer 5

chrissiflam Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 28, 2020 6:16 PM in response to LACAllen

Strange, he is not using another app. Our settings are exactly the same. He has over 34,000 photos/videos on his phone and they take up 2.5GB of storage, my phone has 5,500 photos/videos and they take up 34GB of storage. He said all he did was back up to icloud. My icloud is up to date :/

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Answer 6

chrissiflam Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 28, 2020 6:19 PM in response to chrissiflam

I'm confused how it's not possible but I'm literally looking at it on his phone. Maybe I will just upload my media to google and not use icloud instead. Doesn't make sense to me how all of my devices have to hold all the storage for the same media when I can't view them without waiting for it to load from icloud. Icloud seems pretty useless :(

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Answer 7

chrissiflam Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 28, 2020 7:02 PM in response to LACAllen

So if I put my photos on icloud backup, I can take them off my phone without deleting them on icloud?

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How to get photos on icloud to stop taking up space on my phone?

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