Optimize iPhone storage - how does it work?

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Level 1

6 points

Optimize iPhone storage - how does it work?

Hi,

I see others asking this questions but couldn't find a good answer.

So I have a 16GB iPhone. Previous to this option I would just take pics/videos on it and once a month or so I'd copy all the pics to my computer and then delete them off my iPhone. If I wanted to look at the pics later on other devices, I would use the Microsoft OneDrive app because all my pictures auto sync from my PC to OneDrive.

Now Apple has an option to keep all your photos so I turned that on and after a while my iPhone runs out of space. I can't delete pictures from my phone anymore because it seems that the phone and iCloud are one and the same so you delete a pic off your phone and it's then deleted from iCloud..makes sense. I enable this option and now it seems that i'll be at an event, I run out of space and I'm done until I get connected to a wifi connection a while, it suddenly has some space again.

What I'm wondering is, how do I know which pictures have the full resolution on my phone and which have the full resolution in iCloud?

I still like to monthly copy all the pics/videos to my computer and I want to make sure i'm backing up the full resolution ones.

Thanks

iPhone 6, iOS 8.2, null

Posted on Oct 12, 2015 11:51 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 12, 2015 12:03 PM in response to texas pete

I'm not really sure why you'd have to wait on Wi-Fi in order for optimisation to take effect, but if you download photos from iCloud.com to your computer you can be assured that they are at full resolution.

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Answer 2

texas pete Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 12, 2015 12:43 PM in response to Winston Churchill

1. I think it only makes the switch when connected to Wifi. You wouldn't want it uploading 100's of mb's of pictures to iCloud over your data plan.

2. I'm not sure I agree. I notice when I click on recent pictures on my phone they open right away. When I click on older ones, it shows a little piece of pie that gradually fills and then opens the picture. That says to me that older pictures are full resolution in iCloud while newer pictures are full resolution on my device.

3. Downloading pictures from iCloud is a total pain if you want to download a bunch at once. For instance, if I select 50 pictures on OneDrive and click download, it creates a zip file, adds them to it and downloads one zip file. If I do this at iCloud.com and select 50 pictures, I can checkbox select all 50 but when I click download it asks me if I want to open or save 50 times. It downloads each pic individually...unless there is some option I'm missing.

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Answer 3

Oct 12, 2015 1:04 PM in response to texas pete

1. That makes sense, I wasn't thinking that new photos would be part of the problem, how much room do you typically have before you start taking photos and how many photos do you typically take, it may simply be that a 16GB phone isn't suitable for what you want to do with it.

2. I'm not sure what you are disagreeing with here, all I was really saying is that all photos in the cloud are full resolution and hence there was no gray areas about what you might be downloading. I'm inclined to think that you wouldn't be permitted to transfer optimised photos from the phone to a computer, but I wasn't 100% sure since it's not something I've tried myself, although I am aware that when you connect a phone to a computer not all photos are available for transfer if you have icloud photo library and optimisation turned on.

3. I can empathise with you about downloading from iCloud.com, it can be a bit painful to select multiple moments, but I don't have to 'save as' for any photos, I wonder if that's a difference between a Mac and a PC or the browsers we each use.

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Answer 4

texas pete Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 13, 2015 6:17 PM in response to Winston Churchill

1. This weekend I had about 300mb free on my phone and took a bunch of videos and ran out of room. Yes, I think I do need more storage, my next iPhone I'll pony up the extra $100 for the extra storage (but I won't be happy about it). 32gb really should be the low nowadays. I do have 1gb free now though, not sure how it chooses when to put the full size in the cloud. it's weird how I added more videos and had 300mb then and 1gb now.

2. What I was saying is I'm not sure if all the photos in the cloud are full resolution. I mean if I take a photo and then go to the cloud 10 minutes later, the full size photo is probably still on my phone until it's had time to upload it.

3. I went to my Macbook Air and went into the Photos app, copied all the photos and then opened a share on my Windows PC to the Pictures folder and then just pasted them all there. That works much easier.

Thanks for your help.

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Answer 5

Oct 14, 2015 12:26 AM in response to texas pete

What I was saying is I'm not sure if all the photos in the cloud are full resolution.

The photos in iCloud photo library are.

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