Michael Kummer: There seems to be a lot of confusion about iCloud Photo Library and storage
space on your iPhone. In particular, if you have an iPhone with 16 gigabytes or maybe
32 gigabytes, then chances are you’ll run out of space quickly. So, one of the culprits
often are photos and videos that you have taken and stored on your phone. So, it’s
only natural to wanting to remove those photos and videos that you don’t need anymore to
free up space in your phone. However, there are a couple of things that
you should understand before you do that. (Music plays and “Michael Kummer Apple Knowledge”
displays) Apple has made it much easier to manage storage
or to let the phone and iOS handle storage, so you don’t have to worry about it. But
it really depends on the settings that you are using. And also, not only the space and
the storage space on your phone but also the storage space you have in iCloud.
I think until this day, Apple still offers only 5 gigabytes of free storage when you
sign up for an Apple ID. So, I wanna just summarize some of the points
that I’ve written about in my blog article that I would highly recommend you to read.
I’m linking it below, so check that out. It really has all the details about iPhone
storage, photos, iCloud Photo Library, how the whole synchronization, etc. works and
tips on why you should not likely not delete photos to free up space. There are only a
couple of special occasions and use cases where that makes sense and in every other
case it most likely doesn’t. So, I wanna just summarize that and invite
you to read the blog article if you want to have more information.
Basically, the way it works is if you set up a phone — a new phone from scratch — chances
are you enable automatically through the setup wizard what’s called the iCloud Photo Library.
It’s, as the name implies, a photo library that’s stored in iCloud. If you have multiple
Apple devices that are signed in to the iCloud that count and that have the iCloud Photo
Library enabled, then the advantage of using that library is that all of your photos are
kept in sync. So, in other words, if you snap a photo with
your iPhone, it automatically also appears then not only on icloud.com. If you log in
via the browser and go to the Photos app, you’ll see it there. But it also gets synchronized
to all of your other devices. Now, in the past before Apple had iCloud Photo Library,
they the had iCloud Photo Stream which was somewhat similar. That’s where I think some
of the confusion comes in, but it worked entirely differently.
The way Photo Stream worked; if you snapped a photo it would send a copy basically to
iCloud. And then all of your other devices would see that photo as part of that Photo
Stream. However, if you then remove that photo from your iPhone, from your camera roll it
would not synchronize that deletion to all the other devices.
So, in other words it could still be in Photo Stream. And if you downloaded that photo to
an iPad maybe, that’s logged in to the same Apple ID, both your iPhone and your iPad would
have different copies of that same photo. Obviously, Apple realized that it’s much
better if you make changes to a photo on one device that those changes are replicated and
synchronized to all of your other devices. And that’s awesome. I mean, I’ve been
using that for years now. And if I take a photo on my phone and if I make changes maybe
I adjust it or add filters, whatever, instantaneously all those changes would get replicated so
I would have the very same edited photo on my iMac, on my MacBook Pro, on my iPad etc.
If I delete one photo, automatically that photo is removed from iCloud and from all
the connected devices. So that’s one of the reasons why, if you use iCloud Photo Library,
you don’t wanna remove photos from one device to reclaim some storage because that means
the deleted photos and videos are going to be removed from all the other connected devices
as well. So that’s not a good thing. Obviously, since space is limited especially
on iPhones Apple has introduced a capability they call Optimized Storage and what that
basically means is that if you run out of space or long before you run out of space
iOS — in the case of an iPhone or an iPad — automatically removes the full resolution
images from the device. They are still stored in iCloud, so you always have the full resolution
images, but they only keep thumbnails, or low-resolution copies basically, on your device.
If you open a photo on iPhone for instance, and the full resolution photo is not available
iOS automatically downloads it for you. So that sometimes takes a few seconds depending
on your network connection. But that way the photos don’t consume all of the storage
space. So, with iCloud Photo Library there isn’t really a need to remove photos or
videos because Apple and iCloud do that automatically. iOS manages its own storage by removing photos
and videos and only leaving thumbnails behind. So, if you scroll through your photo timeline,
you’re not gonna notice the difference most likely. You’d think all of your photos are
there but when you click on one and it starts downloading that’s an indication that photo
wasn’t actually in your device. It did not consume any significant space. So that’s
why you don’t need to start deleting photos. Now one thing obviously is if you don’t
have enough iCloud storage, then you have an issue. Because iOS cannot upload photos
to iCloud and remove it from the local device if you have no space in iCloud. So, you’re
gonnna likely hit a limit or the limit really quickly if you only have 5 gigabytes worth
of iCloud storage. That’s one of the reasons why you might wanna remove photos from, not
only from the device but from iCloud in general to free up space in iCloud and consequently
also on the phone. What you need to do to make this work is basically,
you need to export those photos from iCloud. And what you can do is, the best way to do
is really on the Mac. If you have a Mac with plenty of storage and your photos app on the
Mac is set to ‘Download full resolution images,’ so you always have the full res
versions on your Mac locally, on your local hard drive. Then you can simply export them
from there. Remove them from the photos app then and that removes them from iCloud and
from all the connected devices. So that’s certainly one way of doing it.
But if you do that then you have the manual labor of making those exports regularly and
then removing them. And you lose one layer of backup because if your Mac ever crashes
or if your external hard drive ever crashes where you might have kept the backup then
your photos are gone. So that’s why I always recommend leaving
them with Apple, paying a few dollars per month for more storage. I think for 2.99 you
get now 50 Gigs or even 100 Gigs or even 200 Gigs. I don’t know. They’ve dropped the
prices. They were a little bit expensive in the past. But I have now 2 terabytes with
Apple and I think I pay maybe, 9.99 a month. And I know that I have all my documents and
all my photos and videos in iCloud. So, if I manage to lose my own backups, at least
I still have them with Apple. So that’s what I would recommend.
If it’s not an option for you, for whatever reason, again if you have enough iCloud space
then you do not have to delete photos from your phone. There is no need. iOS manages
its own storage. Now there are a couple of examples where pictures
and videos can still use up space. That's for instance, if you use applications like
WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger; you know any of those messaging apps basically, where you
can send and receive photos and videos. Those are stored separately from your iCloud Photo
Library. They might very well start accumulating space and then you might end up with gigabytes
of data, of attachment data basically from those applications. And you think it’s those
photos. But it’s in reality, those apps. And I can show you. I’m gonna link it down
there in the description where you can go into the settings and you can see you exactly
what application is using how much space on your phone. You can also see how much space
is taken by photos, and then per application. And that way you can identify what app is
the culprit. It might not be photos. It shouldn’t be photos if you’re using iCloud Photo Library.
So that’s one of the key points that I wanna share.
If you don’t have enough iCloud storage, then you need to remove photos from iCloud.
The best way of doing as I’ve mentioned is to use the Mac. That’s the most reliable
way because if you plug in your phone to a PC and you try. You know, all those photos
that have not been downloaded from iCloud, you cannot easily transfer because they're
not on the device. So that's not a very reliable and good way
of exporting your photos. That only works if you do not use iCloud Photo Library where
you have all the pictures locally on your device. Then you can export them from your
phone even to a PC. But otherwise, the Mac solution is definitely the most reliable one.
Alternatively, you can also go to icloud.com and download them from there. You can, I think,
select multiple photos but if you have hundreds of thousands of photos so that’s not very
reliable either. So the Mac route is definitely the most reliable way.
But again, if you can get some extra iCloud storage, wait for those photos to be uploaded
and then you don't have to worry about storage space on your phone.
Also, if you remove photos from iCloud Photo Library they are not truly removed. They are
moved to a recently deleted folder or album. I’m not sure if that counts towards your
storage. It might. So even if you remove something it's not really a removal. It's just a moving.
And if you're out of space then that moving might not work because you don't have space
to make the copy and then remove it from there. So that's also an issue that I've seen with
some users. But the good news is, in the Recently Deleted
Album you can restore images that you accidentally deleted. So, it's definitely a good thing.
But just be aware that if you really wanna free up space and you decide to delete photos
and they get moved to the Recently Deleted Album. Then empty that album, because otherwise
they still might use up the storage space that you tried to free.
That was a quick overview of how I recommend you manage your iCloud photos. If you like
the video give it a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe if you wanna see more videos
like that and you get notified if you enable the alerting in YouTube. If you thought that
the video was not super useful this button seems to be working as well. Check out my
blog. I’m linking it down below, and thanks for watching. See you around.
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