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WePhoneMA Author

Level 1

61 points

Can not free up storage space after deleting all photo

I have a iPhone5 with ios8.1. I deleted all photo and videos in my photo library to free up space. however, in usage it still shows the photo library used more than 6gb space. in "about" page of setting, it shows 800 photos and 70 videos in my iPhone. but I cannot find any photo in photo library, and not from iTunes or iPhoto by connecting to MAC. it bother me for a few weeks. does anyone have a solution?

Thanks

Ann

iPhone 5, iOS 8.1.1

Posted on Nov 23, 2014 6:30 PM

Top-ranking reply

tomjpollard

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Jun 24, 2017 1:19 PM

I had the same issue on my iPhone 5s, which was reporting almost no free space despite the fact that I had deleted ~6GB of photos, cleared the `recently deleted` albums etc, and waited around 6 months. The rolling-back-the-years fix suggested by Lawrence Finch didn't help. In the end, for me the following steps solved the problem:

Back up your phone with iCloud or iTunes;
Select "Erase all content and settings" in Settings > General > Reset;
Restore the phone from the back up.

For me, this process took around an hour and I now have my 6GB back 🙂.

View in context

172 replies

Jun 3, 2017 2:07 AM in response to WePhoneMA

I experienced similar problem of memory space not getting released after deleting huge numbers of photos and videos. After sufficient research found out that by selecting-> Camera -> All Photos -> recently deleted and then selecting -> Delete All released the space.

Oct 28, 2017 9:30 AM in response to WePhoneMA

Apple have informed me that my iPhone is running out of storage space. I have deleted a lot of my videos and many of my apps, yet I am still notify that my iPhone is running out of storage space. This is very confusing and annoying. Can the Apple team rectify this for me. I'm an 86year old man and am not computer savvy.

Yours truly,

Wai Sum Lee

Nov 27, 2017 4:27 AM in response to WePhoneMA

I face the same issue but specific to WhatsApp .. so I went into whatsapp > settings> Data and Storage Usage > Storage Usage where I found different whatsapp groups holding some data in ascending order to their associate data size.

Here If you open any specific whatsapp group with higher data consumption, where the data classification will show you what feature is holding how much data. e.g Photos 9.6 MB , GIF 2 MB , Videos 500 MB , Voice Messages 4 MB , Documents 100MB etc..

here User can manage this by clicking on 'Manage' button...
My observation is deleting data associated with 'Documents' is freeing up lot of space
hope this helps

Thanks

Dec 23, 2017 8:39 PM in response to wai sumfromsingapore

This has been an issue with every iPhone Inhave ever had. Apple does not fix it, I will be switching to Samsung Galaxy in the coming weeks when's i get paid. I am done with Apple, they take for granted their loyal customer base and do not solve these issues. What they want to do, is sell you bigger phones, so you spend more money on bigger devices.

Feb 26, 2015 4:25 PM in response to WePhoneMA

I am having the same issue. I tried to sync my phone to and empty folder on the desktop and it didn't work. This "photo library" is taking up so much room and I have no idea how to get rid of it.

ajt302

Level 1

5 points

Feb 27, 2015 8:59 PM in response to rboko

Same problems here, deleted all photos, emptied recently deleted photos, synched with iTunes, iPhoto library is empty, but I still show 10 GB - 877 photos after the it

unes sync.