Apples support gave me the following steps to fix this problem and it gave me 20GB of available storage. I was concerned about my photos though it looks like it just moved all of them to the iCloud. Not sure I have questions about this.
general > transfer or reset> reset > reset all settings
i had to log back into my wifi and change some settings though not sure what else has changed. Please advise.
iPhone 7, iOS 15
Understood. But, your photos remain on your device. Perhaps you optimized storage (settings > photos) which can reduce the size of your on-device library substantially.
Biggest issue: After looking further many of my photos synced to iCloud still showing on my phone though not physically stored to my phone so it looks like I didn’t lose anything
If you have iCloud Photos enabled, settings > photos. The photos in iCloud will be deleted as you deleted them on your phone. If you disabled iCloud Photos, then you can delete the photos on device without affecting iCloud storage. If you still see the photos on your device, you didn't delete anything. Photos cannot be offloaded into iCloud, they will also always be on your device. You can optimize storage to reduce the size of your photo library but deleting a picture on device also deletes it from iCloud.
Here’s my steps that happened on my iPhone 14.
Hope this clears things up.
I see that optimization is on for my photos, could have been something the reset steps I followed did.
My biggest issue originally was that I deleted quite a bit of videos and my available storage kept DECREASING not INCREASING, even though I also permanently deleted them. This was very puzzling though the Reset steps I followed as directed my Apple Support fixed my issue. Glad it gave me 20GB of space back.
Not sure I'm following your issue. Deleting photos should indeed increase your available storage. If your device syncs to iCloud and you delete photos, they delete everywhere.
Note: the photos I deleted did NOT come back (as expected) though all my other photos that were on my phone got moved to the Cloud. Giving me a lot more space.
Permanently deleting photos INCREASED my available storage
