Does switching off Icloud Photos in the Photo's settings give you more space?

Question

Does switching off Icloud Photos in the Photo's settings give you more space?

My iphone 12 mini 128 GB states I have 24K pictures on it. It only dawned on me the other day that this was including icloud photos, I only have like 5-6K on the device itself. The iphone is now at 127.8 GB full, and it's having major issues, including being unable to be backed up. When I go to settings > Photos and select to switch off Icloud photos, (I have already selected Download and keep originals to move them off my phone) it tells me something like "This Iphone was not able to download 19,076K Full resolution photos and videos. If you continue, the low-resolution versions of these photos and videos will be removed."

What does this exactly mean? I'm hoping it means it will delete the pictures from icloud from other previous devices off my phone, and keep the original resolution ones on Icloud- giving me space to back up my daggum phone and fix all the issues. (Something else I don't understand, is WHY are these icloud pictures are taking up space on my phone in the first place if they're on the cloud? I have 200 GB of icloud storage and it's only half full. I don't understand- I just want to be able to access pictures saved on icloud easily through my phone, not have them take up space. This leads to another question;)
if I'm correct in my first question, and turning it off does save space (and doesn't actually permanently delete any pictures)but I later I turn icloud photos back on to either have access to pictures on icloud easily, or to have my pictures taken with my phone added to icloud, will it automatically fill up my phone storage again?

THANK YOU!!!!

Other information that may be important:

I have been fighting for YEARS trying to figure out how to get the pictures off my phone, bc again, it just dawned on me that despite seeing 24K on my phone, I always thought it was a technical problem that my computer only showed like 5K when I plugged it in. Now the phone is 127.8/128 GB full and I'm thinking a lot of issues are BC of it. It's restarting on its own repeatedly, if I can get to the home screen, without it freezing or restarting again- app icons are missing but you can select them. I can't even call my phone though, and I have to restart several times to make everything work again. I CANNOT back up the phone through icloud, itunes or even CopyTrans- havent been able to since 2022, and I can't even view the categories of storage on my phone- (like how many GB apps and pictures are taking up. I only see the grand total. Everything else just loads indefinitely.)

iPhone 12 mini, iOS 16

Posted on Jun 14, 2023 9:45 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 15, 2023 8:56 PM in response to zac_k107

How does it take up more space if I'm not downloading any originals from icloud onto my phone?

Thank you for the reply, but it doesn't help me much. I don't have any music or movies on my phone. I have several apps, but not having been able to update them in so long, they take up little space (I also have offload apps turned on to save space.) I already moved off every voice recording, and the video recordings I have are fairly short and not a whole lot though I plan to move them off, but I'd ideally like them to JUST be on icloud if possible, and NOT be on my phone. I don't own a Mac- I have a Dell Inspiron 15; sadly, my laptop is almost full itself and I'm planning on getting a 2TB SSD for it. (But I'd like to not fill it up with photos.)

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Answer 2

zac_k107

Level 1

146 points

Jun 15, 2023 11:12 PM in response to Tektonic Shift Stacey

Thanks for providing more info. If you are still confused about it taking up more space when you turn off iCloud, then you would lose the space because iCloud would try to salvage any photos from iCloud in transferring it to your iPhone’s storage. Currently, my Photos take up more than a fifth of the space we are using on iCloud (123.6/551.5 of the available 2 TB), and, on my 12 mini, I have got (60 used of) 64 GB. If I was to turn off iCloud, it would fill this storage, and, as there are many more than 4 GB of photos, I would only be able to keep a marginal amount of them. One thing you can do, even with a Dell computer, is to connect it via Lightning cable and move the Photos to a physical drive, such as a USB drive or (micro) SD card. If you end up deciding to get a 2 TB SSD for your computer, I highly doubt much of it would be taken up by the photos, as you would only need to put the ones from your phone on the SSD; the rest can stay on iCloud. Let me know if you need any further instructions.

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Answer 3

zac_k107

Level 1

146 points

Jun 14, 2023 11:23 PM in response to Tektonic Shift Stacey

Contrary to what you have said, disabling iCloud Photos will use more space on you iPhone, as it will use up all of the remaining room to try and keep your photos, even though you would still lose the most of them. I suggest connecting it to your Mac/MacBook and uploading them via Lightning Cable to that device, and then put them on a USB drive, or keep them on another device with enough storage, which could include your computer. One way you can reduce the amount of storage you have used is by deleting large media files, not only including long videos and high-resolution photos, but also any movies or tv shows you have downloaded on your phone, along with any Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon Music etc. playlists. Let me know if you found this helpful.

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Does switching off Icloud Photos in the Photo's settings give you more space?

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