IPhone – Freeing up iPhone storage

icloudiphonephotosstorage

I'm trying to figure out how to free up phone storage space without losing all my pics. I have some loaded onto my laptop (Windows); don't know why they aren't all loading. I want to free up phone pic space but not lose all the pics. Some have suggested turning off "upload my photo stream"…

I have the iOS 10, there is no longer a "stream", it is now "All Photos". But when I turn it to off position I get the prompt "turning off photo stream will delete all photo stream photos from your iPhone". Will they be saved to the cloud or not? Pretty confusing.

Best Answer

In iOS, they recently introduced an option to have all your photos saved to the cloud, and have low-quality photos remaining on your phone. If you go into Settings > Photos and select Optimize iPhone Storage, this will happen and a considerable amount of space will be freed.

Another alternative is by an app that you can download. Search for "battery doctor" on the app store. The icon is a green battery with a plug coming out with a silver border.

Here's where it gets weird:

  1. Open the app
  2. Wait for the spinning wheel to go away (located in the top menu bar, next to the WiFi indicator)
  3. Double tap in the blank bottom area (above the bottom menu, but below the top header)
  4. Quit the app via the app switcher
  5. Open the app again, if it looks different, you're good. If not, go back to step 2.
  6. Go to the bottom menu item labeled "Junk"
  7. Clear your cached files.

As always, I recommend backing up before you do this. I was able to clean >1 GB this way, results may vary.

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