Space concern about enabling a huge Photos Library on iOS

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Level 1

13 points

Space concern about enabling a huge Photos Library on iOS

My Photo Library is over 250GB, I'm wondering if enabling it on an 32GB iPhone won't eat up all of it's storage space. Is there a way to limit the amount of photos or space used by Photos on an iOS Device?

I would like to access my library on iPhone, but I can't do it if that will consume all of it's storage space, so until today I only used photo stream on iOS and enabled the Photos Library on a MAC,

Can anyone tell me what should I do? Enable The Library with optimized storage or keep using photo stream only?

Any suggestions?

iPhone 5s, iOS 10.0.2

Posted on Oct 13, 2016 5:43 PM

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Answer 1

zinacef

Level 10

88,810 points

Oct 13, 2016 6:55 PM in response to ZyRyZ

To limit the amount of space that is consumed on your iPhone by your photos and videos, you should use the 'Optimize iPhone Storage' feature -- iCloud Photo Library - Apple Support

Manage your photo and video storage - Apple Support

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Answer 2

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Oct 13, 2016 7:03 PM in response to ZyRyZ

Photo Stream has a limit. 30 days storage maximum. After that period files are removed.

Using optimized storage is a variable. There is no published formula as to how large the space savings are. It is often reported the optimized files take up about 10% of the storage that full sized files do.

There is no level of control on this. It takes the space it takes.

So, your 250GB library may be about 25GB on your phone.

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