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Phantom Photos? iPhone 5c / iTunes showing more photos than there are

Phantom Photos? iPhone 5c / iTunes showing more photos than there are


While trying to be a good housekeeper, I deleted almost all of the photos from my iPhone 5c (IOS 8.1.3) camera roll to clean things up and free up space.


iTunes and my iPhone's Usage for Photos are still showing that I'm using over 3GB of storage for photos (515 photos), but there are only 22 images on my phone, copied from iTunes sync.


I've done everything I can think of:

  • Backed up and restored my iPhone entirely
  • Unchecked "synch photos" in iTunes and applied and synched; no change
  • Tried synching photos to an empty folder in iTunes
  • I removed all photo apps I had (Cam Wow, etc.)
  • Deleted all my iMessages
  • Checked that there is nothing left in Deleted Photos
  • I do not use iCloud, nor am I signed into it, but I double-checked that too


If I look at my Internal Storage folder on my PC, it shows the one lonely photo I took to get my internal storage to appear on my computer.


Does anyone know how to clear out the "phantom photos" that are taking up valuable space on my iPhone?


I've seen post after post about this on the internet, so I think this is a big problem Apple! No one seems to have the solution!


Thanks for any help you can provide community!

Posted on Feb 18, 2015 10:14 AM

Reply
3 replies

Mar 2, 2015 6:48 PM in response to sfracc

This trick worked!


It says I have over 5000 pictures on my iphone when I connect it to my mac taking up 11GB of space, but I only have just…


Basically, download and install iFunBox (Norton deems it safe), then:


Once you open the program you should see your phone detected in the top right-hand corner. This will allow you to remove the leftover files on your system.


On the top-left tab click iFunbox Classic.

Click the + beside Raw File System.

Click the + beside PhotoData.

Click the + beside Metadata.

Click the + beside DCIM.


Look through the various 100APPLE,101APPLE,...etc folders and delete everything inside the folders. There should be a lot of file remnants in there taking up space. Once you delete them you can turn your phone off and back on again. This resolved the issue for me. Good luck!


My Manage File Storage on my iPhone now no longer shows I have 3 GB of photos taking up space! However, iTunes is still showing my Photos to be taking up 2.8 gb of storage (531 photos), but nothing is on my phone.


iFunBox seems to delete remnanants of photo files from "Other" in iTunes and freed up the space on my phone, though I still can't figure out where iTunes is getting the 531 photo information.


I now have 6 GB free on my phone, which was my goal!

Mar 26, 2015 9:16 AM in response to sfracc

Check out this thread:

It says I have over 5000 pictures on my iphone when I connect it to my mac taking up 11GB of space, but I only have just over 2000 in my camera roll? All my storage is now full up. Has anyone got any suggestions please?


txforever came up with a pretty nice solution.


txforever Mar 5, 2015 9:35 AM
Re: It says I have over 5000 pictures on my iphone when I connect it to my mac taking up 11GB of space, but I only have just over 2000 in my camera roll? All my storage is now full up. Has anyone got any suggestions please? in response to Dan1807

I managed to get rid of the phantom usage. Restoring iPhone and resetting the phone settings/data do not work for me.

I had to move the Date on my phone earlier by 1,2,3 months and found the phantom photos in the Recently Deleted Folder. Next, I deleted the photos manually from the Recently Deleted Folder and the usage got freed up from my iPhone.


Hope this works for you

Phantom Photos? iPhone 5c / iTunes showing more photos than there are

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