You’ll notice that your available iCloud storage space doesn’t change right away as you delete photos. That’s because, when you trash them, instead of being permanently deleted, photos and videos are sent to the Recently Deleted album. To add space back to your cloud account, navigate to the Recently Deleted album and remove all of the files from it.
Going forward, there are a few things you can do to keep your photo storage from overflowing. For example, it’s a good idea to cull photos as soon as you take them. If it takes five-camera taps to get the perfect selfie, delete the four photos you don’t need right away. Similarly, crop videos to just the parts that you want to keep and delete any outtakes.
You can also move older albums offline if you don’t need to access them across devices on demand. Shifting data to an external hard drive will free up iCloud storage space and can save you money on your cloud storage subscription over the long term.