Can not free up storage space after deleting all photo

Crash354 wrote:

Has this issue been fixed by Apple yet??

It depends on which issue you mean. The problem of deleted photos remaining was fixed in 8.4, however, that only affected new photos after 8.4 was installed. It's still necessary to remove older photos using the process described in Why does my iOS device say I have more photos than I can find?

Im using Iphone 6S 16GB with the latest Software Update i.o.s 9.2.1. but I got the "Memory Full Issue". I have 11.6 GB capacity but now I have only 200MB remaining memory, my Apps and files doesn't add up... I tried the Phone Reset by pressing the home and power button together. I had delete almost of all my photos and did exactly same as Mr. Lawrence Finch had teach (Why does my iOS device say I have more photos than I can find?) but problem still persist. Kindly for assistance.

Thank you!

The missing storage could be data corruption. Restoring iOS should free most of it.

You will have to restore the phone using iTunes, which will update it to iOS 9.3. You will need the latest version of iTunes, which is 12.3.3, and that requires Windows 7 or later or Mac OS X 10.8.5 or later.

If your computer meets these requirements update iTunes to 12.3.3 (http://apple.com/itunes), then connect the phone to your computer. Click on its icon in iTunes and click Back Up Now, then when that finishes click Restore iOS. When the Restore finishes it should restore your backup.

Part of the problem is that Apple has changed the way it manages photos over the years. Photo Stream was a way to get images off your phone in near real time. However, the photos in Photo Stream are removed automatically after 30 days, so it requires that you copy them to somewhere permanent. I don't recommend using it anymore, as there are many better solutions. There were also a couple of Apple photo management apps including iPhoto and Aperture that still work, but have been deprecated and aren't being updated.

iCloud Photos is the current Apple photo management feature. If you turn it on all photos you take will be copied to iCloud in near real time, and also copied to all devices that have iCloud Photos enabled on them, including other iOS devices, Macs, and even Windows (with the right app installed). They can also be viewed by logging in to iCloud.com with a browser. It has 2 downsides: The photos are replicated on all devices and synced, so if you delete a photo from your phone it will also be deleted from your Mac or other devices. And they take up space on all devices. The other is that if you want to manage them in some other app (such as Lightroom) you must export them using the Photos app on your Mac. If you have iCloud Photos enabled on your phone then your photos will not be included in an iCloud or iTunes backup. There's more details here: Keep your photos safely stored and up to date on all your devices - Apple Support

You don't have to use iCloud Photos. If you turn it off you can also treat the iPhone as a digital camera, and copy your photos to your computer using a USB connection. This doesn't use iTunes; if you plug the phone in it will be recognized by your computer (Mac or Windows) as a digital camera. You can use any app that you would use with a digital camera to import photos. On a Mac the built-in tool for this is the Image Capture app, but within Image Capture you can set it to connect to any other photo management app. See: Import photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support and What to expect when you import edited photos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to your Mac or PC - Apple Support. Note that if you use this approach you will lose any edits that you have made to the images on your phone, including any filters that you have enabled. The metadata is saved in a separate "sidecar" file that is not imported.

Backups are different. The iCloud and iTunes backup feature backs up the phone's content that is not synced any other way. For example, it will back up your contacts if you do not have iCloud Contacts enabled, but it will not if you do. Music and apps are never included in backups, because they can be reinstalled from the iTunes media library on your computer. For more information on backups see: About backups in iCloud and iTunes - Apple Support

Syncing is mostly one way, from iTunes on your computer to your device. So it isn't truly syncing. See: Sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iTunes on your computer using USB - Apple Support

To create photo albums on your computer that include photos not taken on the iPhone you use iTunes to sync the photos to your phone. With the phone connected, look at the Photos tab in iTunes. See the 2nd major topic in Keep your photos safely stored and up to date on all your devices - Apple Support(this link is also above in the iCloud comments). This approach is a little kludgy, because there's no way to remove the photos from your iPhone except by connecting to iTunes and "unsyncing" them. I use 3rd party tools instead; either Google Photos (which is really amazing), or upthere.com, which is a startup created by former Apple employees. Both of these keep the photos in their respective clouds, and only download them when you want to view them.

This should get you started. Please feel free to ask about anything else that occurs to you.

Same problem with an iPhone 5S. We deleted all albums, all photos, deleted Instagram (just in case), turned off all iCloud options for Photos. Image Capture shows no photos. iPhone shows no photos, no albums, no shared. After deleting Instagram, there is no other app on the phone that uses photos.

Yet the Manage Storage on iPhone says Photos are using 8GB.

We Reset the phone, using "Erase All Content and Settings", and then used Restore iPhone from iTunes.

We've tried everything we could find in lots of forums. And still 8GB is used for Photos that apparently don't exist.

I tried buying an extra 20 GB on iCloud. In a other forum they said this would free up the space. This did not happen immediately. But then I went back and did another sync in iTunes. This time i checked sync over wifi. This time the memory did free up completely. What a strange scenario.

In my case I turned iCloud backup off. Logged into iCloud, there are no photos. There is no backup. I Reset the iPhone and erased all contents, and Restored from the Mac. It still showed over 1500 photos. Which don't seem to be visibly anywhere.

Exact same thing for me. The photos sat in the Recently Deleted Album for 30 days and counted down each of the those days.

It's now been 30 days. The photos are gone from that Album. But no space has been recovered.

This is so fundamental.

I also have this problem. I've deleted most photos plus gone through my text messages and deleted photos from there. Spent all afternoon going through texts, deleting, deleting, deleting......and it freed up 550 kb. :-(

ALL I CAN SAY IS ARG!!!!! SAME PROBLEM. SO FRUSTRATING. I AM COMPLETELY OUT OF SPACE ON MY PHONE AND I FIND MYSELF DELETING APS JUST TO BE ABLE TO GET ANYTHING DONE. CAN ANYONE TELL I'M UPSET BY ALL THE CAPSSSSSSSSS!

Mr Finch, you are a star! This has been bugging me as my daughters Ipad mini said I had about 10GB of photos. Followed your instructions and it worked like a dream. Now have 10GB available.

Many thanks and I advise others to give it a go!

Wow - this worked for my kids IPad!! Incredible. Another Apple PITA solved in some nicely laid out steps - a big thanks Lawrence for posting this. I have been going a bit crazy trying to sort this out. Do the good folks @ Apple know this, or how can this be escalated. To me it is a BIG flaw. The answer is not intuitive at all. Maybe a fix should be sent out in the next IOs update.

Anywho - thanks again!!

Thanks Lawrence. This has been driving me and my boyfriend nuts for some time now. I'm pretty tech savvy and I have to say that this certain issue was pretty frustrating to fix. I would have never figured that out on my own. No one likes to do a factory reset if it can be avoided because it feels like all the work you have put into it gets flushed down the toilet.So just wanted to say thanks for finding this fix, it did the trick!

Hi, I did all this and still have not retrieved my storage. I do not have cloud turned on, tried turning everything off and on a few times, nothing seems to be working. Nothing shows in the recently deleted items folder, either at todays date or when I turn back the date manually. I had a lot of photos from a big trip so now it still shows 29 GB in my Photo Library under usage but they have all been deleted! I hope you can help. Thanks.

If you are running iOS 8.2 or 8.3, and you have really followed the steps that I posted exactly, including setting back the time 2 years, then opened the Deleted folder even if it says zero images, then your phone's memory is hopelessly corrupt and you will have to restore it and set it up as new.