I’ve deleted every photo in my camera roll (and cleared recently deleted), have no shared albums, no hidden pictures - essentially, zero content. iCloud backup has been turned off for two months. Still, the app is taking up 16GB of storage with “Documents and Data”. Is there any way to get free up this space?
iPhone 11, iOS 17
If you have no photos in your library then delete the library and start a new one when you're need it. There are a lot of supporting files in a library which are not needed if you delete all of the photos from the library. A new, empty library is only 2.6 MB.
How would one go about doing that?
Opps, did it again. Missed that you were referring to Photos on an iPhone. As Richard pointed out it can't be done on an iPhone.
đź‘Ž on the new "joined" Photos community.
Unfortunately, deleting the Photos Library can only be done on the Mac, not on a phone.
So, to be clear, is it true that when you look at Settings>General>iPhone Storage that, in addition to that cute graph, you see the list that includes Photos, and it says 16 GB next to it? Mine says 4.46 GB, and then Documents and Data says 4.46 GB. I have 15000 pictures, but I have "Optimize Storage" checked.
Have you tried a forced re-start or a factory reset as Matti Haveri suggested? You would want to make sure you were backed up to iCloud, first, I think.
Force restart iPhone - Apple Support (JO)
Reset iPhone settings to their defaults - Apple Support (JO)
Do you still have pictures on iCloud Photos? If there's nothing there that you want to keep, you could turn on iCloud again, wait a few days, and delete everything. Might work... let us know
Old Toad wrote: Opps, did it again. Missed that you were referring to Photos on an iPhone.
I've done that so many times since they put iPhone and Mac stuff in the same place. It oughta be in RED!
Did resetting the device to factory settings help?
Photos app taking up 16 GB with no photos?
