"Over capacity": How can I delete photos from iPhone / set the maximum capacity of iCloud photos to be downloaded to iPhone?

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Level 1

99 points

"Over capacity": How can I delete photos from iPhone / set the maximum capacity of iCloud photos to be downloaded to iPhone?

Hi,

My iPhone regularily goes over capacity because it stores, or tries to store, too many photos/videos from iCloud on the device.

How can I delete photos from the iPhone (but not generally from iCloud/Photostream). How can set the maximum capacity of iCloud photos to be downloaded to iPhone? (I am searching for a setting like "keep the last 2GB of photos/videos from iCloud/Photostream, but not more than that. I know how to turn iCloud off in total, but that is not what I would prefer to do, I just would like to set reasonable maximum.)

Thank you for your ideas!

Generally, I someone could point me to a good tutorial on how local photos vs. iCloud photos vs. Photostream are supposed to work that would be great as well, because I have many other problem with Apple's system in that regard as well (esp., despite that obviously a lot of space is taken up by photos/videos on my device, my iPhone still downloads recent photos/videos over 3G... I also have the problem that all photos appear double if I try to copy to my Mac with ImageCapture or iPhoto, but there is only a single copy (no HDR, burst or the like) when seen with the Photos.app of the iPhone itself... I came to believe that Apple's photo system is somewhere between counterintuitive and plainly not working... (/rant off) )

iPhone 6 Plus

Posted on Feb 20, 2015 2:08 PM

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Answer 1

razmee209

Level 10

199,320 points

Feb 20, 2015 2:16 PM in response to _daniel_

Sorry there are no settings to set max capacity.

My Photo Stream FAQ - Apple Support

Get help using My Photo Stream - Apple Support

iCloud: iCloud storage and backup overview

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Answer 2

_daniel_ Author

Level 1

99 points

Aug 6, 2015 10:43 AM in response to razmee209

Hi,

razmee, thank you for the heads up and for the links! I also found useful: http://mashable.com/2014/06/16/my-photo-stream-camera-roll/

anyone interested what I ended up doing, I decided to disable the Photostream function, immediately freeing up 1GB (why? in very short, my reason was that Photostream replicates what you can be done with iCloud Photo Library, you really only need iCloud Photo Library activated and then don't need Photostream – provided your use case is that you a) want to see all your photos on all your devices and b) have them backup'ed to the cloud. Photostream does only a, and only for 30 days. There may be use case for Photostream for some, a but I found Photostream for me personally utterly useless and rather a distractor and a replication – after reading what its does and how it works...)

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