iPhone Photo Library "Ghost" Space

🙂You saved the day! Thanks!!!!!🙂

You're welcome!

Have you tried Lawrence's link above?

The solution above has been posted multiple times in this thread already....

Cheers,

GB

Well, yes, you are undoubtedly right. They were also probably in on the "landing on the moon hoax"....

GB

Nevermind, I found it!! Thank you so much. That freed up so much space. Life save.

Thank you so much Lawrence. Your detailed solution/steps was of great help!

Unfortunately, I am having the same problem, but since I regularly delete all photos from Recently Deleted right after deleting them from my Photos albums, finding the right time at which they were still in Recent Photos is fairly impossible. It could be anytime between a few seconds to several minutes after I deleted the Photos from my albums, and I've tried several times of the same previous day, but I can't find any photos at all in Recently Deleted.

Sorry, but can you explain what it is you are asking? The post you are responding to is almost 3 years old, and you need to put your current question in context. Also, what model device, what iOS?

Cheers,

GB

Further to this post I noticed that although I cannot see any photos in the iPhone app, the iTunes summary still showed 4+GB photos and the ever growing (by now about 7+GB) Other files (still showing 8.1GB in the Settings>Usage for photos only leaving 2+GB free on the phone). After numerous resets and sync of the iPhone, finally got to 6.2GB free space, iTunes showing 0 for photos, but iPhone Settings>Usage still showing 4+GB for photos (was the original size of photos on my iPhone). It appears due to some file corruption the original photo library is still on the phone but inaccessible to iTunes and the iPhone Photos app.

Check these possible sources of photos on your iPhone:

• Tap the Photos app. what photos do you see? You should, as a minimum, see Camera Roll and Recently Deleted. If you see any other albums they were synced from your computer, and you will have to unsync them using iTunes to remove them. You can also delete any in Camera Roll and Recently Deleted.
• Go to Settings/Safari and tap Clear History and Website Data.
• If you use any other browsers do the same with them.
• Do you have the FaceBook app? If so any images that you can see in may be included (I'm not sure about that one).
• Do you ever send photos using iMessage or MMS? Those count in the photo usage number.

After you've checked all of these try syncing with iTunes on your MBA. Sometimes a sync will clean up left over deleted data.

Try restoring iOS using iTunes, and restore your backup. Sometimes this will clean it up.

If all of this fails to resolve the problem you are left with only 2 options I can think of: Restore the phone with iTunes and set it up as a New phone, without restoring your backup. Then add your apps, music, etc, back. You will lose any app data.

Or pay the $20.

The Paid version of TouchCopy should allow you to delete files. However, have you checked all of the potential sources for photos, such as MMS or iMessages sent or received? The other way to remove photos is to Restore iOS on your phone and set it up as New. You will erase all app data this way (not just photos). If you sync your mail, contacts, calendars, notes and reminders with iCloud they will not be lost. Nor will email and other content from non-iCloud accounts that are either IMAP or MS Exchange. Content from apps that sync to the app's servers will also be able to be restored (such as Words with Friends, FaceBook, etc).

That's the problem with deleting the files using a 3rd party tool. It frees up the space, but does not update the database, so the phone still "thinks" it has all of those files.

Just as a wild guess, take a picture with the phone. Then check again. Sometimes this will help a database correct itself.

You can try the date-change trick that was posted earlier or can be found here: Why does my iOS device show more photos than I actually have?

If that doesn't fix it, back up the phone to iTunes, then Restore iOS on the phone using iTunes and restore the backup.

And if that fails you will have to live with the incorrect information or set up the phone as New.

Thanks Lawrence,

I did exactly what you suggested: iTunes restore and date fix. I would recommend others with this same issue try this option first before resorting to TouchCopy or other 3rd party apps.

Also, make sure you back up to iTunes as well as iCloud in case one of your backups is corrupted. Having an iTunes backup also allows for a MUCH speedier restore (minutes as compared to hours or even days).

This thread seems to make it pretty clear that the issue is not needing more storage on your device, but rather how to work around a bug that will, eventually, be fixed. So, again, your conclusion is faulty at best.

GB