I deleted all my photos but they are still taking up space

Thanks! I followed your instructions and did a heavy restart (on/off key w/ the button in the front) and then deleted the photos in the deleted photos album. Voila! I finally have my 7GBs of space back!

I deleted most of my photos, but my iPad was still using 20GB for photos! I used the roll-back-the-date method and was able to delete hundreds of hidden "deleted" photos. I got my photo use down to 1GB. I'm astonished that this is the only way to solve this problem. Is this a feature? Is anyone from Apple reading these comments? The developers should be embarrassed.

Thank you TXForever! I showed 1.7 GB of photos, but only had 3 photos on my device.

I set my iPhone back one month (Settings | General | Date & Time | turned off Set Automatically, then changed date back one month).

There they were, now showing in the Recently Deleted photos.

I deleted them, changed my Date & Time back to Set Automatically,

and as the French say, "Voila!" My photos instantly dropped to a few MB of usage.

I am having the same problem. I tried to follow your steps but ran into a snag:

1. Open iTunes on your Mac. Success

2. Plug your iPad in. Success

3. Check that both iTunes and your iPad both say that you have pictures. I can't see any pictures on my iPad but iTunes shows I have 400+

4. Open iPhoto on your Mac. Success

5. Select "iPad Camera" in iPhoto. Since Mac has moved to Photos, I don't have this option

Any further suggestions? I have tried resetting my iPad but that didn't work either.

6. You should see pictures.

7. Select "Import all".

8. A pop up should apear asking if you want to delete the pictures from your camera.

9. Select delete then if you want, you can delete them from iPhoto.

10. Sync your iPad in iTunes.

Do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGaR9hglCJ0

Download iexplorer to your PC or MAC and follow the instructions from this video. It works like a charm, I just got rid of 6.4 GB of ghost pictures.

You rock. This worked. Not sure how many months back one has to go. I randomly reset the date so that my phone thought it was three months ago. For those who don't know, your phone's date and time setting are probably on automatic. You have to turn that off and then set the date.

You might also check Messages app, where photo attachments can be hiding. For each thread, tap Details, scroll down to the attachments, long tap (tap-and-hold) one of them, tap More… in the edit menu, then you can choose photos and delete them.

When you delete a photo from your iPad Air it only transfers it to the "Recently Deleted" album, rather than removing from the device so that the photo is recoverable - in case you deleted by accident.

Photos are automatically purged from the recently deleted folder after 30 days.

If you need to instantly purge deleted photos to free up space just go to the "Photos" App. Select Albums on the bottom of the screen and open the Recently Deleted Album. You should now be able to "Delete All".

These photos are no longer recoverable so make sure that you have copied them to your master library or definitely don't want them anymore.

It should not be necessary to change any dates or reset your device. It can however take a bit of time to actually delete a large number of items, so give it 5 minutes before checking your storage again. I wouldn't recommend re-booting the device while the deletion is still being processed - although I haven't heard of any issues from this.

Sorry, Charles, but this doesn't work for me (iPad 2). I regularly delete photos from Recently Deleted right after I've deleted them from my Albums, so finding the exact previous time and date during which all those photos were still there (yesterday afternoon) is hit-and-miss and, after changing to several different times of the afternoon, I couldn't find any images at all in Recently Deleted. I know it was yesterday afternoon when I deleted the 2,800+ images from my Photos album, but I can't pinpoint the exact time at which all those files were still in Recently Deleted before I deleted them from there, also.

You don't need to remember the date or when you did something, just set any date a year or two or more back. Its been a few years since I succeeded with my situation and it has not come back. Seems to me I went back just a year, you might try five years ago since your iPad is now dated.

What exactly do you mean by "reset the date back 6 months". I have 7 phantom GB on my photo library, so I'm willing to try anything!

Thanks!

Of course when you're done and satisfied, change Date and Time to Set Automatically so that it is correct again.

Seriously I have spent forever trying to find the answer!

YOU Rock TXFOREVER!

Cleared out 5.03 GB in seconds! AMAZING

BIG thank you from me too txforever, - just reclaimed 9GB! I can't believe such an issue can exist - no doubt Apple won't admit it does. Very frustrating and such an easy fix when you know how 🙂

I had to manually set my date back before I even purchased the new IPhone6, but it worked like a charm! I freed up over 3 GB of space from "Recently Deleted Photos" !!!