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Joe Siegler Author

Level 1

32 points

Phantom space taken up by Photos and Camera

Today I was clearing off space on my iPhone in prep for a large photo taking session. Here's what I deleted:

a) 100% of the photos on camera roll

b) 100% of the photos on my Photo Stream

c) 100% of the photos on shared photo streams.

So basically as of right now, my phone has zero photos on it. I took a few screen grabs to show that:

http://joe.siegler.net/images/iphone_photos1.jpg

http://joe.siegler.net/images/iphone_photos2.jpg

So I went and looked at my system usage, and it is telling me there is 740Mb of space being used up by "Photos & Camera".

http://joe.siegler.net/images/iphone_photos3.jpg

My first thought was perhaps old text messages, but I deleted 100% of my text messages/iMessages, and there's nothing there. Rebooted the iPhone just to make sure, and the 740Mb remains in system usage.

Where is this 740Mb coming from? Anyone have any idea what the deal with this is, given I have zero pics on the phone right now?

iPhone 5s, iOS 7.1.1, 16Gb

Posted on Jun 6, 2014 3:20 PM

27 replies

Joe Siegler Author

Level 1

32 points

Jun 7, 2014 8:36 AM in response to gail from maine

It didn't affect the camera roll at all. The pic showed up in "Photo Library".

Jun 7, 2014 12:19 PM in response to Joe Siegler

Well that's just weird! Try one last thing - unsync the picture you synced by unselect the Sync Photos button again. Based on what you have been seeing, this probably won't do anything either 😟, but can't hurt to try one last time.

Sounds like you either are going to have to go back to the full factory restore, or take it into an Apple Store to see if they can figure out what the issue is....

Sorry that sync process didn't work. Usually that replaces anything that is there.

Just out of curiousity. Are you syncing via Wifi or via iTunes on the computer?

Cheers,

wavymitch

Level 2

405 points

Jun 7, 2014 12:22 PM in response to gail from maine

I'd say it's just little bits of corrupted data that wont' clean it self out.

I'm with gail, it's for sure a restore i'd say. Bummer for sure though.

Unless you're okay with dealing with that 3/4's of a GB being used on the device.

Joe Siegler Author

Level 1

32 points

Jun 7, 2014 6:44 PM in response to gail from maine

Well that's just weird! Try one last thing - unsync the picture you synced by unselect the Sync Photos button again. Based on what you have been seeing, this probably won't do anything either , but can't hurt to try one last time.

It didn't do anything. I tried the other suspects after unsyncing the picture, including a restart and all that. Never could get rid of it.

Just out of curiousity. Are you syncing via Wifi or via iTunes on the computer?

Hardwired. I haven't done Wifi sync since they first added that feature. I spend so much time sitting at my computer anyway, I just decided that I'd do hardwire syncing.

I'm with gail, it's for sure a restore i'd say. Bummer for sure though.

That's where I ended up going. This morning I did a full wipe and started over. In the end, I only lost one app worth of data doing all this, the rest I could recover either from iCloud, or an apps own cloud storage.

The phantom space is gone now. So that's good. Took me most of the day to get everything set up the way I wanted it again, though with reconfiguring all the apps and all that.

Joe

P.S. One mildly annoying thing, the "other" space went to 1.3Gb after my first sync. Really Apple? Only thing I can come up with is that space is mostly taken up by iTunes in the Cloud data. I turned that on during the inital setup where it had only the factory apps on it, and nothing custom. That's all I can come up with. My iTunes collection is 12,650 songs, and 104.82Gb total. So all that indexing is probably where this "other" space is coming from.

Jun 7, 2014 9:34 PM in response to Joe Siegler

Hi Joe,

Glad you got it all sorted, but sorry we couldn't find an easier solution for you.....

Thanks for posting back with what you did and what you found. And I'm glad you didn't lose too much App data! 🙂

Cheers,

Mar 24, 2015 2:07 PM in response to Joe Siegler

I think there is a bug in "Recently Deleted" feature which causes this. Try the following:
Set the date of your phone a few months back. These phantom photos should show up in "Recently Deleted" section on iOS photos. Delete them from here and set the date back.

nquist22

Level 1

0 points

Apr 16, 2015 9:40 AM in response to ksandeepv2

Yes - I just went did this as well - I had some long (large) videos that I couldn't find, taking up a ton of space. Manually adjusted the date, updated in increments of 15-30 days back in time, and then toggled back to the "recently deleted folders". sure enough, old photos and videos began to show up and I was able to delete them.

Apr 16, 2015 8:21 PM in response to ksandeepv2

This solution was discovered by fellow poster txforever. There is no need to go back in increments. Set the time back to when the new "Recently Deleted" feature was introduced in September of 2014. (so set the date back to 9/1/2014). All of the Recently Deleted that were really not aged off by the iOS will display and an be deleted all in the same exercise.

Cheers,

Jun 1, 2015 12:09 AM in response to gail from maine

The solution from txforever is perfect and a step-by-step procedure for this solution is here:My iPhone 5 camera roll is empty, but under usage says 3.1GB - how can I delete? Then follow the solution from scabthepoet. As of 6-1-15, 35 people have said that his solution worked for them. 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. By the way I have an iphone 4S and this solution worked for me also.

Hi1307

Level 1

0 points

Aug 3, 2015 7:50 AM in response to Joe Siegler

Here's the solution that worked for me.

Go to General > Date & Time. Uncheck Set Automatically and scroll back to like a year ago. Next, go back to the photos and check "Recently Deleted". You'll see the tons of Phantom Photos there. Just click delete all and go back to set the time automatically. Worked for me. Hope it does for you too!

Dec 2, 2015 1:03 PM in response to Joe Siegler

If the date shift thing does not work Download iExplorer from Macroplant look in your device and you find some folders named photos and in there you will find lost thumbnails that need to be deleted.

Feb 15, 2016 8:46 AM in response to Joe Siegler

The date shift worked for me… the second time I tried.

Originally it showed nothing so i downloaded iexplorer and found the images in there, but they were locked and I couldn't delete them with it. The iexplorer help file suggested closing the camera and browser apps on my iPhone. After that they were still locked in iexplorer, but when I set clock to automatic and then back to aug 2014 again the 2000 odd phantom photos were there in my recently deleted folder. It was over 6 gigs of data.

So either accessing the files through iexplorer OR just closing the camera and browser apps made the photos appear.

THANKS!!!

Phantom space taken up by Photos and Camera