Shared albums and local storage

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Level 1

4 points

Shared albums and local storage

I have a couple shared albums that I am subscribed to from a family member. They two albums combined have about 8k photos.

I personally do not have any photos on my iPhone as I back them up to Google Photos. But my storage says I have 12.8 GB used from the photos app.

These albums are not mine/on my device, so how are they taking up space? I am under the impression that shared albums only take space on the creators/owners device. Is that not correct? Or am I experiencing an issue?

iPhone 11, iOS 16

Posted on Mar 26, 2023 9:55 AM

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Answer 1

Jeff_888

Community Specialist

Mar 27, 2023 3:25 PM in response to Vikings1228

Hi Vikings1228,

Thank you for participating in the Apple Support Communities. We understand shared albums appear to be taking up space on your iPhone. A version of the photo is synced from iCloud to your device so it would be expected for the photos to take up some storage space on your device. You can learn more about Shared Albums here: How to use Shared Albums in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Take care.

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Answer 2

Apr 2, 2023 9:04 AM in response to Vikings1228

Vikings1228 wrote:

I thought the whole point of iCloud is to not take up space in your device.

That is not true. The whole point of iCloud is to sync data between devices. Thus, anything saved in iCloud will be replicated on all devices logged in to iCloud. iCloud is not a cloud archive or storage service.

iCloud+ has 2 independent functions. iCloud backups, and iCloud sync. It’s confusing because they both have the same name prefix. But they have no connection with each other. Go to Settings/[your name]/iCloud. You will see a bunch of switches (with iOS 16 also tap Show All). When you turn on a switch that data type will sync to iCloud. If you do this on multiple devices that share an Apple ID the selected data will sync to all of those devices.

You can also turn on iCloud Backups. This will back up your phone every night if the phone is plugged in, connected to Wi-Fi and locked.

But note that anything that you sync by the first method will be excluded from the iCloud backups.

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Answer 3

Vikings1228 Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 2, 2023 8:57 AM in response to Jeff_888

It doesn’t seem like it’s taking up “some” space. 8k photos is about 13gb and that is what it being taken up on my device.

I thought the whole point of iCloud is to not take up space in your device. Especially considering these photos aren’t even mine.

I even have the option to save the photo from the shared album to my device. That makes me assume it is not on my device, and therefore should not be taking up space.

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Shared albums and local storage

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