My iPhone 5 camera roll is empty, but under usage says 3.1GB - how can I delete?

armccoy wrote:

Also, I read about iExplorer and tried a demo

Personally I get a bit nervous with these 3rd party apps that dig into the contents of my devices, so I can't comment on whether they work or not, or how to use them effectively.

For your situation, if the photo usage is being misrepresented then something could be corrupted beyond what a simple device reset can do. You might do a backup (to iCloud or computer) and do a full restore of the iPhone and then load your backup (and apps & media, etc.) back on. That may fix the issue, but if there is an underlying corruption somewhere, that problem could be part of the backup so you may end up having to start from scratch.

I had a similar issue where I had barely any photos on phone but then it was showing 7GB under Settings>General>Usage>Storage>Photos & Camera and then under Photo Stream. Having then copied all photos across to my computer I kept trying different on and off settings to try rectify and I finally found that it removed this when I went to Settings>Photos & Camera and switched the My Photo Stream option off (at which point it asked me to confirm as: Turning off Photo Stream will delete all Photo Stream photos from your iPhone). When I then went to check in the usage setting it was gradually showing more free space as I checked over next few minutes until the Photo Stream had dropped right down. Don't know if this helps in your scenario but its just giving me a whole loada iphone back ;P

I've been having a similar issue. On my iPhone 5C it said that I had a bunch of pictures taking up 2GB of space, even though I had used Windows Explorer to move all of the pictures from my device onto my computer. No pictures in my Photo Library, yet my phone was saying there was 2GB of space being used for pictures in the Photo Library. After trying restarts and this and that, without success, I tried a third party app as suggested on LifeHacker (i-funbox). I was then able to access the DCIM folder that way, and there were a LOT more folders there visible, three of which contained a LOT of photos... 2GB worth. I deleted them and... it got rid of 2GB of "OTHER". Well, it's a start. I'm sure the other pictures are there somewhere!

If you are trying to update to iOS 8, which requires 4-5 GB of free available storage through WIFI, and your not able to update because of this, I would suggest an update through iTunes which only requires 900MB ish. If it is a software glitch and you backup in iTunes, restoring the backup in iTunes will only bring the glitch back to the phone. I would suggest selecting the restore iPhone option in iTunes which will also update, and then do a MANUAL sync back onto the phone.

I deleted all my pics/vids from camera roll. Turned off Photostream and iCloud Sharing. My Photos app was completely empty, but usage showed 5GB usage in photo library. After days of restarting my phone, I came across your post.

That you for referring ifunbox. I had the same issue on my iPhone 5 and free'd up 5GB worth.

I have the same issue - all photos are deleted but iPhone > setting > usage says 2.7GB are used by photos (I have iPhone 5 using iOS 8.1.2)

I wish not to reinstall the iOS or to install a third party app on a PC to solve the issue. Is there any other way??

WWhen you delete photos from your library they don't really free up space because they go into a folder called Recently Deleted. Go into your photo library and at the bottom select Albums. You should see the Recently Deleted folder. Select that and then you can delete the photos a second time to make them go away permanently and free up the space.

Thanks for suggesting i-funbox. Had over 8GB worth of hidden photos. iTunes can't see it. Windows Explorer can't see it. i-Funbox did the trick. Actually found hundreds of old pics in multiple "Camera" folders. My sanity thanks you

I have this same problem and there are definitely NO photos on my phone. All Albums are 100% empty, including the "Recently Deleted" album. When I connect my phone to iTunes the storage bar says I have 1323 photos (3.27GB). When I use the Settings app on my phone (under Settings -> General -> Usage -> Manage Storage) the "Photos and Camera" app is apparently taking up 3.2GB of space, by far the biggest consumer of space on my phone. It's driving me crazy. I've also installed the iFunBox app and that doesn't seem functional at all --- I actually can't see any files using this app.

I found a partial solution. After reading some forums I downloaded a desktop program called iMazing (http://imazing.com). In that program I clicked on the "Photos" menu and a progress bar appeared saying "Loading Photos" --- this continued for about 60-90sec but then completed and said that the folder was empty. When I click the "Get Info" button for the Photos folder it says size of the folder is 0B. Same for the Camera folder (0B).

However, in the File System folder I found --- that's right! --- 1323 photographs. Cannot be a coincidence that is exactly the number of photographs that iTunes says I have on my phone. I found these photos under "File System -> Media -> DCIM". I copied the photos onto my desktop (just in case) and then deleted the photos from within the iMazing program.

I also found thumbnails of these same photos stored in "Media -> Photo Data -> Thumbnails -> V2". The thumbnails alone were taking up almost 1GB, so I deleted those too.

Interestingly, only photos from 01-Oct-2014 were "stuck" in this Media folder, so this seems to have been a problem that started a few months ago. If I hadn't fixed it I guess my phone would've eventually just been filled to the brim with these undeleted photos?

Deleting these photos definitely freed up space on my phone.

However I did say this was a partial solution. In iTunes it still says I have 1323 photos on my phone. These phantom photos are driving me crazy. 😟

There are actually four files saved under "Media -> PhotoData -> Thumbnails" called 3303.ithmb, 3309.ithmb, 3319.ithmb and 4031.ithmb. I know these are thumbnail files, but each file is HUGE (up to 297MB) so the four of them add up to a big chunk of space. I'd like to delete these 4x files but don't feel confident enough to do that. I don't mind deleting .png and .jpg files, but files with unknown extensions... I'm a little more cautious.

I have the same issue. I've delete all my Camera Roll photos, but the "usage" number still says 7.5GB.

I have an iPhone 6 (iOS 8.1.3) and I don't want to rely on third-party apps like iExplorer... so I was thinking about an alternative. Here's what I think I'll do:

1. Turn off Photo Library from my iCloud backup options
2. Create an iCloud backup (without my photos)
3. Do a full restore
4. Load my latest iCloud backup (without my photos)
5. Hopefully no corrupted files will be back to my iPhone

Do you guys think it would work?

See a similar thread on Photo Library Usage problem quote:

I have deleted photos from iphone 6 but the photo library still takes up a lot of space in internal storage. How can I delete photo library from storage on the iphone?

unquote

on https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6699647

You'll find a handy workaround - if you have sufficient iCloud storage.

I had this exact same problem with my iPhone 6. I completely emptied my iPhone of photos yet it was telling me that 10.8 GB was being taken up by the photo library. I have had an mac app called PhoneView for a long time, but it did not report any photos. Based on advice here I downloaded i-Funbox. I was hesitant to run it as it is from a developer that is unknown to me and it is not a signed app (so you have to launch it by control clicking on the icon). I downloaded it to and ran it from a guest account to hopefully add a bit of a safety net. I was able to run it right from the mounted .dmg image. Oddly it found 26 folders labeled Camera, Camera1, Camera2 ... Camera25. Inside about 8 of those I found thousands of pictures. I think they are mostly if not all rejects from burst photos. I copied them all to my mac just to mac just to make sure they were not pictures I want to save. I was then able to delete them by selecting all in each shown folder and control clicking on them. I have my 10.8GB back! I don't know what those Camera folders are though. This is obviously a bug Apple needs to solve.

I've been searching for an answer to this very problem for a solid day. Here is what I did that worked for me. No reset. No need to upgrade to more Cloud storage or anything else. I had already deleted out every picture from my phone, including "Messages" and the "recently deleted" album, etc. There really are phantom pictures in there, but the only way to see them and delete them is to:

1. Go to Settings
2. Date & Time
3. Untoggle "Set Automatically"
4. Manually change the date back. For example, if today is March 15, 2015, choose August 1, 2014. (You can change it back once we're done)
5. Close out of that
6. Open "Photos"
7. Select "Albums"
8. If, like me, you had already cleared out everything from the Camera Roll and "Recently Deleted" folder, you'll smile to see that your "Recently Deleted" folder now has thousands of images back. Those are your phantom photos
9. Open it, "Select" and start deleting
10. Now, go back into Settings - General - Usage - Storage - Manage Storage - and you'll notice your Photo & Camera is empty if you deleted everything

I hope this works for everyone and that I saved you all the time I wasted searching for an answer myself -- only to never find one. Now you have the answer.

I went from barely having any room left on my phone to almost brand new again.

Take care.

Holy crap! This worked for me! How did you find this out? Thanks for this.