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

This was a breath of fresh air. I was searching on how to get rid of 4GB worth of phantom space that had me going crazy for almost an hour. To be honest, while intentions for the creation of "Recently Deleted" albums might have been pure, it does much much more damage than good and I would rather have the option to turn it off. Apple please take note.

this is EXACTLY IT! **** the third party apps. this is all you neeed. thank you. thank you. and, thank you. ^^this guy knows whats up. just got my first iphone weeks ago. ok. now i can go back to recording guitar licks.

This worked perfectly. It wouldn't let me go to 2014, but I set the calendar to September 1, 2015 and I had over 500 pictures in my recently deleted photos. TY TY TY!

This was a beautiful fix!  I was out of memory, deleted every photo and app that I didn't need, but still showed huge amount of photo storage usage.  Was driving me nuts and I was just about to concede to buying a new phone for more memory....until I found this thread.  Followed the date/time reversion fix and BAM!.....I had over 2.8 GB of space magically restored to my 5s.  What a relief.  Thank you!!!!

Thanks sooooooooooo much! you just helped me released 9GB of storage on my iphone 5s!!!!!

Regards,

Henry

To: scabthepoet

Thank God for people like you. You found the perfect solution, I freed up 3 GB of storage by deleting the phantom photos. I just want to add another small helpful point: just looking at the "recently deleted" album doesn't show anything other than "0", you have to tap on the "recently deleted" album to see the phantom photos. Scabthepoet, you're the man! Yay!! This was a problem with my iphone 4S, no problem no more!

That worked like magic for me, thanks

Thank you so much for doing all that research,  this has been making me nuts for so long and I've deleted so many apps I like to make room for these phantom photos!! Argghh!!!

Try going to photos--albums---recently deleted---select the photos you deleted---select trash. Your deleted photos stay on your phone for 30 days after you delete them.

This fix worked for me:

1. Set date manually for 40 days in the future;
2. Wait 5 minutes and confirm recently deleted goes to 0;
3. Power down phone;
4. Turn back on and it's cleared out.

This is definitely a bug, but this is the quickest easiest fix by far.

Wow this is AWESOME! I just got 5GB back on my phone! I honestly thought this seemed a little weird but it totally worked! Thanks for figuring this out and sharing it! - Krissy

Hi guys,

I have gone thru all the steps suggested here - changing the time back and even forward - but when I go to the Deleted Folder, the phantom photos won't appear! It's strange as it works for my other phone which is on iOS 8.2, but failed to work on iOS 8.4.

Help me please!

this totally worked! thank you, you genius!

Worked perfect.  This was a lifesaver.  How stupid that I have to change the date to really really delete photos.  I should be able to just delete them really one time.  Argh.  I am now downloading IOS 8.4 since I freed up over 5Gb of storage.  I hope it works with IOS 8.4

This was a bug in versions of iOS prior to 8.4. I believe it has been fixed in that version.