Photos app on IPad Pro says not enough storage to import photos, settings say otherwise

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Level 1

8 points

Photos app on IPad Pro says not enough storage to import photos, settings say otherwise

Recently, whenever I try to import photos from my camera onto my 2018 IPad Pro via a USB-C SD card reader and the Photos app I am denied by a message saying there isn’t enough available storage. This is despite the Ipad declaring that only 44 GB out of 1 TB has been used. Interestingly, this information appears to be false given on the same page as this information in settings it tells me that Lumafusion is taking 200 GB of storage. The only other significant apps are Photos, IMovie, and Dropbox at around 5-8 GB. Regardless, it still means I should have plenty of space for future photo imports. I have optimised storage set on the photos app and sufficient iCloud space. Why isn’t the IPad and the Photos app correctly reading the available space?

iPad Pro, iPadOS 14

Posted on Feb 10, 2021 6:10 PM

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Answer 1

jdo_apple

Community Specialist

Feb 13, 2021 9:04 AM in response to EscoTico

Hi there EscoTico,

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities. It sounds like you are trying to transfer 200GB worth of photos on to your iPad that is using iCloud to store photos. When transferring photos on to your device, you would need enough free storage on your device to store the photos, because they are stored on the iPad until they upload to iCloud.

There are a couple ways you can proceed to get those photos added to iCloud and to your iPad.

1. You could transfer the photos a little bit at a time and allow the photos to sync to iCloud.

2. You could use a computer to transfer your photos to iCloud directly: Set up and use iCloud Photos.

We hope this helps!

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Answer 2

bailier

Community Specialist

Feb 16, 2021 4:18 PM in response to EscoTico

Hi again EscoTico,

We see what you mean about your storage not matching. If you plug your iPad in to a computer and look at your available storage that way, does it show the same available storage? What about if you restart the iPad? Is the iPad maybe still in the process of syncing or restoring data?

We look forward to hearing back from you.

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Answer 3

Feb 18, 2021 6:19 AM in response to EscoTico

Hi there EscoTico,

Thanks for the information. When you plug the iPad in to your computer, does it show a matching available storage amount? The mismatched storage information may indeed be part of the issue. Checking the available storage using a computer will help us find out where the storage issue is coming from so it can be resolved.

We look forward to hearing back

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Answer 4

EscoTico Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 15, 2021 10:13 PM in response to jdo_apple

Hi Jdo_apple,

Thanks for attempting to help but I think you have got the wrong end of the stick. I am actually trying to transfer about 50 GB of photos and videos to my iPad which, as I mention above, has at least 600GB of space using the most conservative estimate. Issue is that the photos app doesn’t recognise this space. What might be related to this issue is that in the storage menu under settings is the oddity that the calculation of storage available and used does not match the figures for each app below it (you can see this in the image I attach to this message).

Thus, in short, I have plenty of space available on my IPad but for some reason the Photos app cannot read it and the IPad itself is having trouble calculating it.

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Answer 5

EscoTico Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 17, 2021 8:01 PM in response to bailier

Hi bailier,

Thanks for responding. I’ve restarted the iPad, let all syncs complete, and the iPad is up to date with the latest iOS version. Thus, I think we can rule these out.

Thanks

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Photos app on IPad Pro says not enough storage to import photos, settings say otherwise

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