Optimized photos enabled and my iPhone storage is full

GrazziaB Said:

"Optimized photos enabled and my iPhone storage is full: I have an 128GB iPhone and with the optimized photos enabled, my photos take up 90GB of my iPhone storage and 490GB on my iCloud (of 2TB space). Unfortunately with the apps and other stuff I don’t have space in my iPhone anymore. You know what can I do? I don’t want to delete my photos"

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Troubleshooting iPad Storage:

Internal storage cannot be upgraded. It is what it is. So, the maximum internal storage capacity never increases, even if you upgraded your iCloud plan. Learn More here: What's the Difference Between Device Storage and iCloud Storage? Apple Support

So, what to do...

Clear Space Using my User Tips:

• How to Clear Space from your Mobile Device, and What to Clear: - User Tip. You may have too much installed, and need to clear space. So, see my user tip: 
• How to Clear "Other" in your iPhone's Storage - Use Backup - User Tip. Caches would be being used for remembrance of application use. It is essentially the same for an iPad: Backup your iPad, and then restore your iPadfrom the backup you've just created. All System Data will delete.

Fully optimized the iCloud Photos may still need 10 to 20 percent of the size in iCloud for the optimized versions.

With 490 GB of photos and videos in iCloud you shroud expect to need at least 50GB of storage for your photos, maybe more. This will depend on the file format of your photos.

You should not let your iCloud Photos library grow beyond a size, that will fit fully optimized onto your device with the least storage. If you can only afford 20GB for your photos on your device, keep the size of iCloud Photos Library well below 200 GB. Keep only your favourite photos in iCloud.

Do you have a computer, where you could archive the photos that you do not need on the iPhone?

GrazziaB Said:

"Optimized photos enabled and my iPhone storage is full: I have an 128GB iPhone and with the optimized photos enabled, my photos take up 90GB of my iPhone storage and 490GB on my iCloud (of 2TB space). Unfortunately with the apps and other stuff I don’t have space in my iPhone anymore. You know what can I do? I don’t want to delete my photos"

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Save Space by Archiving All of your Photos:

If you don't want to delete these Photos, then you can export these photos from your iPhone to an external source. Here is how to do you for iPhone and iCloud. You'd then delete them from your iPhone. This will save you lost of space.

A. Exporting Photos from iPhone:

• to your Mac
• to your Windows PC
• to an external source

B. Exporting Photos from iCloud:

One unique method...

Download All of iCloud to an External Drive:

Use my user tip: Getting a Quick and Direct "iCloud Drive-to-External Hard Drive" Download - User Tip. In Depth: One thought would be to download all of iCloud, and then search through it in Finder on a Mac. You would download it to an external drive, and then open the drive in Finder. Search through it using the search bar on the top-right corner of the Finder window. Enter various photo file type extensions (i.e. png, jpg, gif, etc.) to see what pops up. Once found, export it to another storage location (your hard drive). Then, trash all of iCloud. Once trashed, upload from the hard drive.

The information displayed on “iphone Storage screen” After “Optimism iphone storage” is turned on, is FAKE.

e.g. your iPhone A is 512GB, your local photos take 300GB, total storage used size is 350GB, after icloud synced all photos and optmised iPhone storage, it says 10GB on iPhone used for photos, total storage used is 60GB only. which makes you believe you have 290GB space freed up on your iphone.

Now, if you have another iPhone B with 256GB iphone, you want to restore the iPhone A 60GB data onto this iPhone B, no problem, right?

if you do it through icloud backup, you will notice it downloads full size of photos and videos from icloud, which makes it impossible to restore iPhone A to iPhone B, as the orignal photos liberary size is large than its whole capacity.

if you backup your iPhone A through itunes on local PC, you believe it would be a small back, as it says on iPhone A, the total space used is 60GB. But, NO, you will notice the backup fill size is still the same as before “Optimis iPhone storage”. 350GB ish.

In conclusion, this “Optimis iPhone Storage” won’t let you restore backup from large iphone to small iphone, even it says the storage size is very small, but the number is fake.

And the icloud restore prioritize the photos sycning as its primary task, so you won’t have anything restored before the full res photos take all the space up on small capacity iPhone.

I just experienced the whole thing. Basically Apple is cheating, and lying.

Once you went beyond the storage threshold, e.g. 256GB, 512GB, you’ll have to buy a bigger storage phone. icloud service won’t make you restore a large phone data onto a small phone, even the optimise iphone storage finished and storage information tells you it’s small size used on your phone, but behind it, they are still full resolution photos.