Photos with iCloud never makes enough space on iPhone (512Gb)

Question

Level 1

29 points

Photos with iCloud never makes enough space on iPhone (512Gb)

This has been an ongoing gripe for years on multiple phones, and I can't believe it's not fixed yet, but it's this: I have a large photo library in iCloud of around 2TB and the Photos app on my iPhone insists on filling up 90% of my entire 512Gb local storage with photos ALL the time, leaving me barely any room for apps! If I delete apps to make room for an upgrade, it finishes the upgrade and then starts filling up space with more photos!

Months of "waiting while the cloud works it out" is not working.

After all these years, Apple seem to not have any way at all for us to control the amount of space we can dedicate to images we want to keep downloaded on the phone, or even to automatically do it well.

Who else is struggling with this?

iPhone 16 Pro Max

Posted on Feb 18, 2025 7:52 AM

Reply

Answer 1

moodler Author

Level 1

29 points

Mar 17, 2025 9:43 PM in response to moodler

So, what did it for me, finally, was this:

Turn iCloud photos completely OFF. Settings -> Apps -> Photos -> iCloud Photos
Don't worry, you shouldn't lose anything from and it won't affect other devices you have.
Wait for a while, and you'll start seeing space return as photos that are also in iCloud start getting deleted from your phone. I don't know how long you need to wait here, but I left it for a day just to be sure.
Turn iCloud Photos ON again. Settings -> Apps -> Photos -> iCloud Photos

Things start behaving like they should, only downloading and storing photos when actually needed.

Reply