Q: Can not free up storage space after deleting all photo

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.

NEVER would have figured this out, and it was exactly the solution I needed to delete phantom photos on my mom's iPhone 6 with iOS 8.1. Thanks!

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.

Anyone know if this space bug - the original where phantom photos are kept - is resolved? The clock setback, delete, etc. worked perfectly for me. I'd just like to know if it might happen again.

I haven't heard any cases of the problem recurring after updating to iOS 8.

Thank you very much for this!! It definitely worked.
I still think I should have more space though. If I go back further than 2 years will there be more that needs to be deleted? Or does it not work like that?
Thanks for the help!!

gillian_grayce wrote:

Thank you very much for this!! It definitely worked.
I still think I should have more space though. If I go back further than 2 years will there be more that needs to be deleted? Or does it not work like that?
Thanks for the help

Go to Settings/General/About. That will tell you if you still have photos on your phone. I don't think going back more than 2 years will help unless you have photos taken more than 2 years ago.

I have the same problem with my iPad, i did everything say about change time and delete pictures nothing work, , reset setting all settings, reset internet settings, my iPad still not space, the last thing call apple support iPad , the person told me to do the next thing: i connected  iPad to iTunes , back my iPad in  the computer . in iTunes in the option in the top restore iPad and update , this process took like 10 minutes after  just restore  the problem was solved. i hope help others,

Hi!

Way of Mr Finch has finally worked for me BUT i had to restart my phone while the date was set back, and only then i could see all the photos that i haven't seen before. yuppie i have gigabytes again

It is two step process  deleting photos and recovering storage space. Once you select and delete the photos in Photos you have to go back and look for deleted items folder in Photos and select the photos and delete them again. When finished go to Settings/General/Storage and iCloud Usage and select Manage Storage and let the management app do its work. After completion you should see more storage in Available.

Having spent many hours over many weeks (I think, indeed, the last few months) trying to do an act that seems as though it should be stunningly achievable and straightforward - and finding ample evidence that it is not - I'm driven by my appreciation of your comments in this thread, Lawrence Finch, to 1) Officially Sign Up to be a member of this community - though I've little to offer, I'm afraid - so I can 2) pose my question to you.  While it's related to this thread (and many, many others), I've not found it put quite this way: If I store all the photos from my iPhone 5 (version 8.3) on iPhoto on my iMac Mini (&/or my MacBook Pro), can I then erase them from my iPhone, confident that they will be retrievable from, at the least, the iPhoto repository?  I have iCloud, and am paying some amount monthly (I'm not being coy; I don;'t remember) to be sure that I have more than enough (200 GB) to cover any possibility that I might lose things through inadequate storage.  The Preferences box tells me I have 183.88 GB available, so I'm evidently uber-safe in that regard.  As well, I have Time Machine cooking away in the background, for what that's worth.  But so far, in all my perusal of these community pages, I keep reading tales from many folks - some of them clearly, as e.e. cummings put it, 'braver than me, and blonder than you" - i.e., not lacking it intelligence and technical savvy - who are variously stymied and steamed.  I'm happy to eschew indignation -- I just want to tuck my photos away in a manner that is assuredly safe, and not ponderously difficult to update as I take more photos.  If I'm out of line posting this question here, I'll submit to whatever scolding is in order -- but dearly hope that I'll be pointed in the right direction, before the door slams behind me.  Heartfelt thanks for whatever useful pointers you may have for this 73-yr-old beginner (who has been with Apple since the IIe I bought in, I think, 1983, which is still up in my attic).

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.