Can not free up storage space after deleting all photo

Well, you are my senior, by about 1 year.

If you keep photos in iPhoto you can safely delete them from your phone. However, the new Photos app on both iPhone and Yosemite/El Capitan syncs photos across all devices, so if you keep them in Photos rather than iPhoto if you delete them from the phone they will also be deleted from other devices.

Okay, Larry -- let's see if I can be coherent and even civil while assembling the germane factors as I remember/retrieve them. First of all, thank you for your reply above. I've browsed online enough (LinkedIn) to appreciate that your services are well and widely valued. I feel privileged to benefit from your knowledge. Here's the deal, du jour: You say "If you keep photos in iPhoto . . . " which I thought I had done, except there is a vast discrepancy between the photos listed on iPhoto - 1,970 items - and the number listed on my iPhone - 6,606. This is not a mere counting discrepancy; there are whole years of photos that aren't in the iPhoto compendium (I'm sure that's not the right language, but I'll go crazy trying to be terminologically correct, and I'm sure you know what I mean). Plus while the iTunes readout on my iPhone asserts that I have a capacity of 12.59 GB, with 2.07 GB free (and the graphic bar at the bottom supports that ratio), the phone itself, while agreeing that I have a maximum storage of (rounded up to) 12.6 GB, it reports a mere 742 MB available. And it's not kidding; it keeps giving me little "heads up" that I'm almost out of space, and that I should do things to maximize my storage. Most of which I've done, and the ones I've not wouldn't amount to a rat's patootie. The thing is, I'm unwilling to resort to wholesale purges because many of the pics are important for an array of reasons; and by no means only sentimental (though I don't discount that, having recently had the last two of seven grandchildren enter the fold.)

Whining is, at the least, inelegant, so I want to say this in a way that's more dignified than whining: BUT -- is there nothing left of the user-landscape where you could literally "drag and drop" **** near anything from Here to There, or from Hither to Yon, and the systems executed promptly and gracefully? That, of course, is a fruitless question. What prompted it was my yearning to be able to go to the icon of my iPhone on, ideally, my desktop; select all the photos in the phone in a simple command, then drag them to a file -- or directly onto a disk icon. Then take the disk, or thumb drive, or whatever, to my office ten miles away, and then wipe the photos clean off my iPhone, if that's the only way I can free up space.

Thanks, Larry for your patience with the grumpy, frantic lot of us -- and congratulations on living a life that has been both contributory and, clearly, personally rewarding. Happily, I feel that way about my own journey to date as well -- though it's been a markedly different trajectory, to be sure. Here's the sketch, if you're curious: http://www.rogetlockard.com/bio.php

All best -
R.

This is very useful, Gerard. After doing the routine that Lawrence mentioned, I still had a lot of usage and no photos listed. I downloaded the demo copy of PhoneView and found the photos that are a problem. PhoneView lists them as "Phantom (679)". But since it's a demo copy, it doesn't allow you to delete. Since this is the only reason I would get PhoneView, the price seems very steep to make a one time fix that is clearly and Apple bug. Is there any way to get to those photos and delete them without purchasing PhoneView? Thanks!

Also, I cannot get the work around to work. Seems I'm caped at 1025 photo's for some reason. I clean off 100 phones and some video's. 1st the iphone says I have some space - say 75MB - but then after a few minutes, it goes back to saying I have 0 space. What is going on? Is icloud using up the rest of the space I just free'd up. iphone 5c, 5.3gb capacity, v8.4, 1002 photos, 24 videos. No space.

Crash354 wrote:

1st the iphone says I have some space - say 75MB - but then after a few minutes, it goes back to saying I have 0 space. What is going on? Is icloud using up the rest of the space I just free'd up. iphone 5c, 5.3gb capacity, v8.4, 1002 photos, 24 videos. No space.

iOS needs space on the phone for temporary storage, about 750 MB. If you don't have that much available the phone will not work reliably. 75 MB is not enough free space. iCloud uses ZERO space on the phone.

This was the VERY best and most helpful post I have ever found on Apple discussions. Thank you soooo much for sharing this incredible solution. My iPhone was practically gutted out trying to reduce memory yet it only had 278 kb's of memory available. I just gained 12 gb back thanks to you. And I have been searching the net for WEEKS trying to find a solution!

For anybody who still has this problem, go into your settings, find the iCloud tab, click on it and then find the photos tab, tap on it. No you should see two options. You should see optimize iPod touch storage, and download and keep originals, tap on optimize iPod touch storage and all that space will be freed up.

Hello! Any other helpful tricks up your sleeve when changing the date doesn't work? Deleted folder still says 0 and I've deleted pictures, videos, and apps - including everything in the deleted box. I've restarted my 5c phone a few times as well. I'm on ios 9. Appreciate any suggestions, thanks!

I DID IT!!!

Or at least I think what I did worked. You have to delete all your photos from you iCloud account as well. When your iPhone is plugged into your computer open up windows explorer (not sure what that is on a Mac) and click on iCloud photos. Delete all the photos from your iCloud cache and then relaunch iTunes. Your photos should be gone. NOTE: Make sure you back up your photos to your computer before you delete them from iCloud.

Hope This Helps,

JSTR82

Hi,

im facing a similar problem now (Obviously in 2016), than was was discussed last year in this forum.....

the issue being that ive tried all the tricks that you mentioned of going back 2 Yrs or so, & then returning to see all the deleted photos still hanging arround in the deleted folder.

tried all that ..but still in the storage, my Photo & camera is showing 746 MB, when i don't have a single photo or video in my roll. even the deleted is empty (after even doing the 2 yr back log thingy).. in short nothing has worked.

please can anyone help ?? i dont have much on my storage & need help.

thanks

sheroy

Hello Lawrence!

I'm currently facing the same problem as soonmuven however mine is a 64GB running on iOS 9.1 and I have tried the methods mentioned here to no avail.

Appreciate if you could share any solutions for us to fix this issue.

Thank you!

Do you have iCloud Photos turned on? If you do then all of your photos are synced to your phone. If you turn it off they will be removed from the phone but kept in iCloud.

If it's off you will have to restore iOS, as there must be data corruption in your storage. First restore using iTunes and restore your backup when prompted. If the problem recurs you will have to restore and set up as new. The restore will also upgrade iOS to 9.2.1.

I have the same issue ever since the 1st of March 2016... Slimmed down about 2 GB of storage but this is not being reflected in the settings panes. Even more annoying, the phone keeps telling me it is out of space...

Clearly I am not the only one around here with this issue, may be a bug?

(iPhone 6, 16GB iOS 9.2.1)

SOLUTION! Hallelujah.

I was having a hard time permanently deleting photos in the Photos app for Mac. I deleted them, then went to Recently Deleted, and deleted those. But by Mac still showed that the space was being taken by ~200GB in pictures and videos. The solution for me was to open a Finder window, head to Pictures > Photo Library. I tried going through the folder using Show Package Contents (right click), but even after going through the Masters folder, could not free up the space. I deleted the Photo Library file. Then I Emptied Trash! The next time I opened the Photos app, it told me I did not have a library. I could choose a folder to use as the library, or Create a library. Create New Library. Boom. After my Mac dumped the ~200GB of images, I had freed up the space on my hard drive. Hope this helps!

I am having the same issue since 1st March.
Deleted ~700 photos, 20 videos, 15 apps and removed everything from the 'recently deleted' folder. I have removed my gmail account from my iPhone. Every time I delete things, I go into settings and see that I have a couple of hundred MB again, but within 10 minutes it is back down to 0 without even using the phone.
I have tried deleting all icloud photos, notes etc from my phone.
I pay for 50GB of icloud storage to avoid this problem and now I can't use my phone properly, get annoying pop up messages about storage constantly. It only says that Photos is using the most of my storage (but only 600MB of my phones 16GB).
It is driving me insane. When I plug the iphone into itunes, documents and data seems to be the culprit, but HOW?! WHAT?!

Someone save me.
My phone says I have the latest software 9.2.1 but my itunes wants me to update it. but it says I don't have enough storage to update. catch-22.