How to delete synced photos.

If all your photos and videos are already in iCloud (check again at www.icloud.com on a computer), you could use brute force:

• Disable iCloud Photos on your iPhone again.
• Then delete all photos in the Photos.app your iPhone including Recently Deleted (do not delete more than roughly 1000 items at once before you empty Recently Deleted, or you may not be able to empty it).
• Once Photos on your iPhone is empty, enable again iCloud Photos and Optimise Storage at the same time.The Photos library on the iPhone should now be much smaller, right from the start.

Thank, you Léonie

I turned that setting on last Thursday and still only 16 GB of free space remains. I have had it on the charger overnight each night. I thought that would have changed some by now. This all worked fine in the iPad. I am sure this is a result of user error/impatience. (me)

Paul

Thank you, Léonie!

Brute force was an apt description. They are now all off of the phone. There remain a number of empty custom folders. (which match with folders on the Masters on the Mac. Some places in the places folder remain with an image of the map and the people folder has people names without an image of the person. Finally Photos on the phone still uses 28 GB which is way better than the 158GB it was using. Rebooting the phone, no change.

I have not enabled iCloud and optimized storage yet Anything else I should try first or will that take care of the problem?

Thanks again!

Were you able to solve this?

I screwed up my migration to iCloud photos on my iPhone and it filled all memory. The sync with the iPad worked fine.

All is well. I followed Léonie's directions and all is well!

Thank you Léonie. Would like to mark it as solved but the only choice I see is "Helpful."

Paul

To free memory on your iPhone, enable “optimise Storage” for iCloud Photos, and not “download originals”. This way, photos you have not used in a long time will be replaced by smaller, optimised versi9ns on your iPhone. It may take a while, until the optimizations will be in effect.

but do not delete any photos from the iPhone, while it is still syncing with iCloud Photos, as the photos will be deleted from iCloud and all synced devices. If you need to delete photos urgently to free storage, disable iCloud Photos on the iPhone, before you start deleting.