Old deleted photo are still on my iPhone

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Old deleted photo are still on my iPhone

In iTunes I noticed that Photos represented a huge chunk of my storage. I moused over the little colored bar and it said I had 960 photos. Well, I knew that was wrong, I only have about 250 including a dozen short (from 15 seconds to 2 minutes) videos. So I tried doing an update, that didn't work. I finally downloaded IExplorer, and discovered that my phone still has every single photo I have ever taken. I deleted some of these photos ages ago (over six months ago to over a year ago) so I know they aren't in that lovely "recently deleted" folder. Why is my phone hanging on to these? It is taking up over 3GB of extra space. How do I get them off my phone once and for all.

iPhone 4S

Posted on Mar 31, 2015 12:43 PM

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Answer 1

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gail from maine

Level 9

52,575 points

Mar 31, 2015 1:14 PM in response to jwilmommy

Follow these steps to delete the "phantom" photos:

1. Go to your Recently Deleted folder and delete any photos showing there now

2. Go to Settings>General>Date & Time and change your date to 9/1/2014

3. Go back to the Recently Deleted folder and click on it (even though it says "0"). You should see any photos that were "deleted" by the iOS. Manually delete them to clean up your storage issues.

This is apparently a bug with the way that the iOS ages off the Recently Deleted photos. A fellow poster - txforever - found this very odd solution!

Cheers,

GB

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Answer 2

jwilmommy Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 31, 2015 1:13 PM in response to gail from maine

Thank you!! It worked. I had to individually select all 700 photos, but it worked!!

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Answer 3

Mar 31, 2015 2:57 PM in response to jwilmommy

YAY!!!! 🙂 Glad you are all set now!

Cheers,

GB

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Answer 4

rhone1

Level 2

183 points

Mar 31, 2015 5:07 PM in response to gail from maine

hi

You could also follow basic roles of iPhoto and use it to multi-select and delete from the iPhone when connected by cable.

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Answer 5

Mar 31, 2015 9:30 PM in response to rhone1

That won't work for this situation. This is a bug in the way that the iOS deletes photos that have been deleted by the user, and which have been stored in the Recently Deleted album. After 30 days the iOS ages the photos off and should be deleting them permanently from the device. It, apparently, is not doing that.

iPhoto and syncing will not help you here.

Cheers,

GB

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