If you’re short on space on your iPhone, you might look at the huge amount of space allocated to Photos and think that deleting all the photos on your iPhone would be an easy way to increase your storage.
You may have heard of iCloud Photos and wondered if it would be a way to back up your photos so you can delete them from iPhone. Or you may already use iCloud Photos and think they are all backed up in iCloud and can be deleted from your iPhone. But you would be completely wrong!
iCloud can be a little confusing: it’s not a backup, it’s more of a sync. So rather than being a way to free up space on your iPhone, it’s more of a way to make everything available on all your devices. That’s not to say you can’t use iCloud to free up more space on your iPhone, you can, but probably not in the way you think.
So, in this article, we will explain how you can reduce the amount of space taken up by photos on your iPhone using iCloud and how you can delete photos from your iPhone and not from iCloud.
Learn how to save space on your device without accidentally destroying your digital memories.
We review the following elsewhere:
If I delete photos from my iPhone, are they deleted from iCloud?
iCloud Photos is a sync. It allows you to see all your images on all your Apple devices (and on the iCloud.com site). If you delete a photo on your iPhone, it will be removed from iCloud sync. However, you have 30 days to recover it from the Recent Items folder.
To find the Deleted Items folder in Photos on your iPhone, follow these steps:
- Tap the Albums tab in the Photos app.
- Swipe to the Utilities section and look for Recently Deleted.
- Unlock the folder.
- Find the photo, select it. (If you want to recover more than one image, tap Select and tap all the images you want to restore.)
- If you only selected one image, that photo will open on your screen. Tap Recover.
- If you select multiple images, tap the three dots at the bottom right of the screen and choose Recover.
How to Use iCloud Photos to Save Space on Your iPhone
That doesn’t mean iCloud can’t help you save space on your iPhone.
If you use iCloud Photos and choose Optimize iPhone Storage, you can reduce the amount of space taken up by photos stored on your iPhone. Also Read: How to Move Photos to iCloud to Save Space on iPhone.
Apple explains: “If your iPhone runs out of space, full-resolution photos and videos are automatically replaced with smaller, device-sized versions. » This should significantly reduce the amount of space your photos take up.
The only limit is the amount of space you have in iCloud. We review iCloud storage plans and other iCloud features separately, but Apple basically offers the following:
- 5 GB free (this won’t be enough for all your photos)
- 50 GB 99c/99p
- 200GB $2.99/£2.99
- 2TB $9.99/£8.99
- 6TB $29.99/£26.99
- 12TB $59.99/£54.99
If you take a lot of photos, you may need to consider 2TB or more, but you’ll be able to share the space with your family members if you enable Family Sharing.
How to enable iCloud Photos
To use iCloud Photos, follow these steps:
- Open Settings on your iPhone.
- Tap the Apple ID section at the top of the screen.
- Tap iCloud.
- Tap Photos.
- Toggle the slider next to Sync this iPhone.
How to optimize iPhone storage with iCloud Photos.
As we explained above, if you want to reduce the amount of space photos take up on your iPhone, you need to enable Optimize iPhone Storage.
Once iCloud Photos is enabled, you can choose to save high-resolution versions of your images and videos to iCloud, but only small versions on your iPhone.
- Go to Settings and tap your Apple ID.
- Tap iCloud.
- Tap Photos.
- Now make sure that Optimize iPhone Storage is selected rather than Download and keep originals.
Once you enable iCloud Photos and optimize iPhone storage, there should be no need to delete photos from your iPhone.
What happens if I turn off iCloud photo sharing?
If you go to Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Photos, you’ll see that it’s possible to stop your iPhone from syncing by turning off the slider next to Sync this iPhone.
If you do this and Optimize iPhone Storage is enabled, you will see the option to delete photos from your iPhone or download the photos and videos to your iPhone.
Assuming you don’t have space on your iPhone to download everything, you can consider the Delete from iPhone option. At this point, you’re probably wondering, “If I choose Delete from iPhone, will all my photos be deleted from iCloud?”
If you never connect this iPhone to iCloud again, your photos will stay in iCloud. But most importantly, if you later decide to connect this iPhone to iCloud using the same Apple ID, iCloud syncing will cause all your photos to be deleted from iCloud to match your iPhone.
How to Backup Photos So You Can Delete Them From iPhone
If you want to delete photos from your iPhone but still have them backed up, there are several ways to do this.
We cover different ways to backup photos on iPhone in another article, but here are some options to consider.
Option 1: Use Google Photos
One option is to use Google Photos to back up your iPhone photos. We explain how to do this in another article, but the steps are as follows:
- Download the Google Photos app on your iPhone.
- Allow Google Photos to access your iPhone.
- Choose the Backup and sync option.
- Google offers free, unlimited photo and video storage, but files will be compressed. Fortunately for typical users, this shouldn’t affect image quality.
If you choose to keep the original image quality, you will have to pay for storage.
With Google Photos up and running, all the photos you take on the iPhone will be backed up. This should mean that if you delete photos from your iPhone, they will remain in Google Photos.
Option 2: Back up to a Mac
You can save all synced images to iCloud Photos on your Mac. Assuming you have enough space on your Mac, this may be an option.
- Open Photos on your Mac.
- Click Photos in the menu bar.
- Choose Settings.
- Click iCloud.
- Choose Download Originals to This Mac.
- With this option, selected high-resolution versions of all images from iCloud will be downloaded to the Mac. Expect this to take some time!
Note that unless you turn off iCloud Photos, your entire library will still sync through iCloud, so if you delete something from your Mac, it will be deleted from iCloud.
There are other ways to import your photos from your iPhone to your Mac.
You can import images directly into Photos on a Mac. To do this:
- Plug your iPhone into your Mac.
- Open Photos.
- Click on your iPhone in Devices.
- Wait while your Mac prepares to import from your iPhone.
- Once you can see previews of the photos on your iPhone, you can choose which ones you want to import.
- Click Import.
You can also use Image Capture to import photos to a folder on your Mac.
Both of these options will take a long time if you have a lot of photos stored on your iPhone.
Once you’ve backed up your photos from your iPhone to your Mac, you might consider backing up your Mac or moving your photo library to an external drive. We also have bundled reviews of the best SSDs and best external hard drives.
For other ideas for getting the most out of your iPhone’s storage, read How to Free Up Space on an iPhone.
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