Why does my phone show a lower photo storage than iCloud?

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Why does my phone show a lower photo storage than iCloud?

Hi there! Currently, my iPhone is showing that my photos are taking up 6.78GB of storage space on my phone. I have the 50GB iCloud plan and it shows that the photos there are taking up 37GB. Why is there such a huge difference? Is the iCloud plan keeping photos that I deleted? I thought that iCloud usually just acted as a synchronization tool, so the photos that are deleted on my phone are deleted in iCloud. Is this not the case?

Thanks so much for any information with this!

iPhone XR

Posted on Jun 25, 2022 8:03 PM

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Answer 1

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David McKinlay

Level 7

22,894 points

Jun 25, 2022 8:27 PM in response to anniejmc95

Why is there such a huge difference?

The photos on your iPhone have been 'optimised' to save space. The originals are on iCloud for you to download at full size at any time.

Use iCloud Photos on iPhone explains this:

iCloud Photos can help you make the most of the storage space on your iPhone. When Optimize iPhone Storage is turned on, all your full‑resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud in their original formats, with storage-saving versions kept on your iPhone as space is needed

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Why does my phone show a lower photo storage than iCloud?

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