Can not free up storage space after deleting all photo

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.

I did follow all the steps, even tried it more than once, but in the end needed to do a factory reset. Kind of scary as I am not that knowledgeable about computers but after doing this, restoring saved info from iTunes and then doing a restart it all finally worked!! Thank you for your help, it is much appreciated, and also for the quick reply to my query.

The one and ONLY way to recover storage on an iphone is to reset to factory defaults. Back up your

photos and contacts etc. and reset the sucker. None of the other options offered on this forum work.

Save yourself the aggravation and reset!

Back up and reset to factory defaults is fine if you don't mind losing all data on your phone. But most of us would prefer to keep our data on the phone, and not have to manually re-enter it, and re-earn the top scores in our games. If you read this and other threads on the subject, the process I posted works and has been endorsed by dozens of users.

But by all means, if the content of your phone means nothing to you, then restore your phone to factory defaults. BTW, you cannot restore to factory defaults and then restore your backup, because the hidden image files will still be in the backup, and will be restored to the phone, so you have lost an hour or more and gained nothing.

Go to Settings>iCloud>Storage>Manage Storage, then click the first button on top that displays the name of your iPhone, and press delete backup. I had the same problem and iCloud was storing my deleted photos. You can create another backup of your iPhone you just have to delete your old backup.

Lawrence Finch... I have the same question, but it's not photos.. it's a video.. I have deleted all movies & TV shows, but it is showing that I have 1 video and it's taking up allot of space... Do you have any idea's on how to get rid of a video that you can't find anywhere in itune?

Thanks for any help

If it's a video that you took with the iPhone it should be possible to clear it the same way. But if it is one you downloaded that's a different problem. Frequently the only way to clear it is to restore iOS using iTunes.

Thank you Lawrence. I have been struggling with this issue since I purchased my phone and had numerous conversations with Apple support. They all had the standard "backup and restore" recommendation. Your suggestion fixed it and freed up my space. You da man!

Mr. Lawrence - your solution worked for me to free the memory occupied by non existent pictures - Thanks. However i have the exact same problem with the Email files- i have no Emails in the Inbox nor in the Trash or Outbox files, yet the Mail file takes up 1.3 Gb of space. The same method that worked to free the photo memory did not work for the Email memory. Do you know of any solution to this problem ? The "Apple Geniuses" say i need to wipe out everything, reload the operating system and start everything all over- which is not really a good solution, it just means they have no idea what the problem is. Thanks

For email, assuming you have either an IMAP, iCloud or MS Exchange email account, delete the account from the phone. Reboot the phone by holding the HOME and SLEEP buttons at the same time until an Apple logo appears. Before adding the account back check to see if you have recovered the missing space. If you have not you will have to restore the phone and set it up as new. If you have try adding the account back and wait for it to finish syncing. If you lose space again then the messages were not deleted from the server. You will have to delete them from there using the web mail client for the account (if it has one) or a computer email app.

If you have a POP email account and you don't need to keep any of the messages on the phone just delete the account, reboot, check again, and add it back.

In either case if the the space is not recovered before adding the account back you have other memory corruption on the phone.