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

To scabthepoet

I can't think of a logical debug sequence that led you to this but it worked like a charm.

Thanks a lot for saving the search! this helped me a lot.

Best Regards.

I have an Iphone 6 and have had the same problems. Download a program called iExporer from Macroplant. They have Mac and PC versions. Sniff around and find folders named pictures or photos and you will find a folder or several folders called thumbnails. Delete those and you will regain your lost storage space.

Very helpful...works.

This was SO helpful!!!  Thanks so much for posting!

Thanks! This did the trick!!!

I have this same issue on my iPad and have tried the reset the time fix to no avail. Anyone know if this fix works on an iPad? Thanks.

I have had this problem for a long time and your method fixed it. Thank you!

Many Thanks. This saved me a lot of trouble. (I ended up finding over 1000 pictures in the "deleted" folder after rolling back the date)

Sometime I wonder (although I'm glad) how do people find these fixes!!!

This helped me!! Thanks a lot for getting rid of the ghost data storage

To scabthepoet:

Thank you, thank you for this work around changing the date back to find phantom photos. It so worked.  Just got a new iPhone 5 today because my battery kept crapping out and it failed diagnostic at Apple store. Apparently there was a replacement program for a batch of bad batteries that were released.  But when they exchanged battery did not solve problem, hence new replacement phone.  At same time I had run out of storage space and could not do newest update. They hoped synching the new phone might resolve the issue or delete all my photos on phone (I had deleted down to 80 and just could not figure how they were taking up so much space, but what do I know. Well, synched my phone and was happy to see I went from only 244 MB available to 3GB and was update was done.  I could live with that, but figured I would delete even more photos (went from about 80 to 66, deleted them out of recently deleted, deleted 2 or 3 apps and a bunch of old messages, and my available storage went DOWN .  What the heck.  So figured I could not be the only one with this weird problem.  Googled and found this site, tried your solution and found 904 "fantom" photos in my recently deleted. Got rid of them and now have 7.4 GB of available space.  DO not know how you figured this out, but THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!!  Saved me $500 dollars from having to buy a new phone for now!!

You are a genius. The people at apple didn't even know how to do this. It cleared it all up now have  8 gig of space instead of zero! Thank you.

That did the trick for me! Thanks so much!

Go to setting

> photos & camera

> icloud photo & library

> slide the green oval button off and back on

> exit out and check your storage

Thanks. That did it. So it's somewhat like emptying one's trash. What a pain to have to delete something twice.