Free up space on IPhone

[penfold]

My wife has an iPhone which is now complaining of no space left. The reason is pretty simple, she has taken a stupidly high amount of pictures/videos and these are eating all the storage up. We do not use ICloud as it is not big enough, but I have installed OneDrive which is uploading all the pictures there. The problem is I don't see a setting like in android which will automatically remove pictures once they are backed up. I must be missing something but what is the easiest way to remove these pictures without going through it manually on the phone?

[Davit2005]

Personally I put any important photos on a NAS then that gets backed up to a cloud provider. The phone I only store photos on that I might want whilst out.

[TheHyperTechie]

You could plug it into a PC and remove the picture folders that way?

 

I back my stuff up to Amazon Photos (Perk of having Amazon Prime). From memory I know Google Photos has an option to delete all backed up photos off the device once uploaded. I think you get 15gb of free storage.

[elsiegee40]

Auto delete on upload isn’t a feature on iPhone unfortunately. If you use Select, you can select them more quickly by dragging your finger over them.

 

Once they’re deleted, you then need to empty the bin which can be done all in one go and then finally your iCloud storage will be cleared.

 

It is worth going into Settings > tap on your picture > iCloud > iCloud backup, then:

 

1. Remove historical backups for devices that you no longer own

2. Go to the device that you’re sorting out and toggle off backups for anything that really doesn’t need backing up (including the majority of apps in my experience!)

 

As I have 1TB of storage on One Drive, I backup photos there periodically and then remove them from my phone

Edited September 2, 2024 by elsiegee40

[penfold]

@elsiegee40 - We also have 1TB of storage on OneDrive, this is why I want to use that. However, my wife has nearly 80GB of pictures which I need to sort out as the phone is now starting to stop working. I guess the quickest way to remove these photo's is from the computer with the phone plugged in? Do I need to use iTunes to do this?

[elsiegee40]

@elsiegee40 - We also have 1TB of storage on OneDrive, this is why I want to use that. However, my wife has nearly 80GB of pictures which I need to sort out as the phone is now starting to stop working. I guess the quickest way to remove these photo's is from the computer with the phone plugged in? Do I need to use iTunes to do this?

 

I have never tried it that way. Past experience is that trying to access anything on my iPhone from a PC is well nigh impossible apart from routine managing the phone’s music content via iTunes. From what I recall you can choose to add photos to your phone from your PC, but the reverse wasn’t possible.

 

I gave up trying to treat it as a USB drive many years ago. Things may have changed.

 

You could try backing the phone up to a PC using iTunes and then see if you can track down the backup on the PC’s drive. It might work.

[penfold]

I just tried opening it as a folder on the PC. Unfortunately I don't know if it is the cable, phone or computer but it is painful. I keep either getting the device disconnected or doesn't show any content of the folder. It seems I have multiple issues and I don't know which is causing the problem - The phone, cable or computer. I just want to create a little bit of space so the phone is useable. Somehow this seems to be a bigger problem to fix than it should be

[elsiegee40]

I would start by manually deleting as many photos as you have patience to do. (And removing them from the bin) It will at least give you a bit of space to work with

[penfold]

I managed to delete about 8GB worth of pictures/video. I had to do it in chunks as when I tried to do whole folders it errored near the end. After a few tries of this I gave up. In batches it works so I guess I have a few hours of cleanup to do

 

I guess this is something I will have to monitor semi/regularly.

 

Thanks for your help all.

[penfold]

An updated question on this post. As ICloud is limited to only 5GB of storage, I found that you basically have to turn off everything to be able to regularly backup the phone. I ended up paying for extra (50GB)storage just so I could get a backup made as I am trying to transfer to a new phone. We also have OneDrive (1TB) and I was wondering if instead of manually removing photos from the iPhone to reclaim space, can you do the following. Backup to ICloud>Backup to OneDrive (I think this is possible) but then also delete from ICloud which will remove the photo's from the IPhone (saving space) but keep them in OneDrive?

 

I am hoping that if this is possible, I would pay for the storage in ICloud just so it saves me the hassle of manually doing it and my wife doesn't get a phone which stops working because it runs out of space and she doesn't manage it

[machy]

1 hour ago, penfold said:

An updated question on this post. As ICloud is limited to only 5GB of storage, I found that you basically have to turn off everything to be able to regularly backup the phone. I ended up paying for extra (50GB)storage just so I could get a backup made as I am trying to transfer to a new phone. We also have OneDrive (1TB) and I was wondering if instead of manually removing photos from the iPhone to reclaim space, can you do the following. Backup to ICloud>Backup to OneDrive (I think this is possible) but then also delete from ICloud which will remove the photo's from the IPhone (saving space) but keep them in OneDrive?

 

I am hoping that if this is possible, I would pay for the storage in ICloud just so it saves me the hassle of manually doing it and my wife doesn't get a phone which stops working because it runs out of space and she doesn't manage it

Turn on photo backup within the onedrive app? & Periodically run the cleanup tool

[penfold]

@machy- what cleanup tool?  On Android I know it autmatically removes local copies of photo's, but last time I looked there wasn't an option in IPhone. Has this changed?

[machy]

1 hour ago, penfold said:

@machy- what cleanup tool?  On Android I know it autmatically removes local copies of photo's, but last time I looked there wasn't an option in IPhone. Has this changed?

I Thought there was one built into the OneDrive app, hidden somewhere in settings

 

if i am wrong i apologise 

 

[penfold]

19 hours ago, machy said:

I Thought there was one built into the OneDrive app, hidden somewhere in settings

 

if i am wrong i apologise 

 

If there is a tool that will be great. But I know virtually nothing about IPhones and having to manually delete photo's is a real pain

[brianhig]

Totally get the frustration. iCloud’s limits make things harder than they should be, and unless OneDrive has that cleanup feature on iOS (which I haven’t seen either), you're kind of stuck doing the manual shuffle. Would be amazing if Apple let third-party apps manage storage like Android does.