Problem after using third-party app to clear some storage.

I always run out of space because I take a lot of photos and videos. So I continuously am deleting other things to make room for new stuff.

This is probably because I have a 64gb iPhone 6s.

I saw this windows application called "PhoneClean" made by iMobie.

I thought it was a great idea to use it.

I connected my phone to my windows laptop via USB, and entered into a "Quick Clean" mode.

It scanned my device for stuff it could clear. Things it could clear were filtered photos' original photos, music artwork cache, user cache, "Other" photos (stuff saved to device from safari or another app), and etc.

It started to clear some of the huge amount of user caches and music artwork caches I had on my phone, because that is what I chose for it to do.

I ended up regretting that decisions because the app broke my photos and camera app.

Photos app would crash, and camera app wouldn't let me take a photo.

I decided to force restart to fix it. It didn't work.

On another attempt to force restart, my iPhone went into restore screen mode, because I held the force restart button down for too long.

So I plugged in my laptop and then downloaded another third party app to turn off that screen. It was named "iMyFone Fixxpo".

It turned on. I went to my photos app and noticed something wrong.

Some of my really old photos were "deleted". Ones from 2020 and before that.

I was devastated because I had not yet backed up my iPhone.

It didn't actually delete them (hopefully).

They are just no longer appearing in the photos app and are not under the photos app in the storage settings. Used to be 44.5GB or something like that. Now it went down to 31.23GB.

All the photos that disappeared now sit under the "Other". Usually my phone has 7-8GB for other.

Lines up perfectly.

20 - 7 = 13

31+13 = 44

But that's not entirely true either because some of them magically disappear, even though the free space in storage doesn't change.

I've tried to backup my iPhone to potentially get those photos, but iTunes won't back up my phone at all because I don't have enough storage free. I don't want to delete anything (but I might have to).

When it did have enough storage though, itunes just sits on this forever.

I'm not sure how I would bring back those photos.

If anyone has a solution, I'd be glad to hear it.