iPhone 12 Advice on daughter’s photo addiction?

[Limey77]

I just upgraded to the 13 Pro so gave my 12 yr old daughter my 12.

She previously had the iPhone 8 64gb, had cloud backup turned on and has WhatsApp set to save all media. So her phone was always full, to the extent you couldn’t back it up, install a new iOS etc.

So three days after getting my 256gb iPhone 12 she has about 80gb left.

I’ve never used the iCloud photo backup so don’t really know how that works. Can we buy more space and then set up to auto delete photos older than XXX?

is there a Shortcut that I could down load to remove duplicates etc?

Basically any and all tips (other than getting rid of the child!) are gratefully accepted.

 

[techspin]

I'm guessing a lot of that storage is taken up by videos? You can adjust camera settings to record at lower settings to help. Yes you can upgrade your iCloud storage.

 

[zakarhino]

I’ve never used the iCloud photo backup so don’t really know how that works. Can we buy more space and then set up to auto delete photos older than XXX?

Yes. If you buy more storage on iCloud you can backup your photo library to the cloud. An additional setting allows you to remove local copies of photos once they've been backed up to the cloud.

 

[Limey77]

Yes. If you buy more storage on iCloud you can backup your photo library to the cloud. An additional setting allows you to remove local copies of photos once they've been backed up to the cloud.

Thanks. Can you set them to delete after say 90 days?

 

[Limey77]

I'm guessing a lot of that storage is taken up by videos? You can adjust camera settings to record at lower settings to help. Yes you can upgrade your iCloud storage.

It’s mainly pics, screenshots and all the crap from WhatsApp. She has like 40gb o f WhatsApp media !

 

[zakarhino]

Thanks. Can you set them to delete after say 90 days?

It automatically removes them from the phone once you haven't opened them in a while or when space on your phone starts to run out.

 

[ericwn]

You can use iCloud Photo Library if you just rent sufficient iCloud storage for her account. Then in the settings of the photos app tell it to optimise storage which will move the original into the cloud.

I have about 400-500 GB of photos and videos in the cloud as originals and can access them from all my apple devices.

 

[Limey77]

You can use iCloud Photo Library if you just rent sufficient iCloud storage for her account. Then in the settings of the photos app tell it to optimise storage which will move the original into the cloud.

I have about 400-500 GB of photos and videos in the cloud as originals and can access them from all my apple devices.

That’s a great start. Can I then set iCloud to delete any photos ina certain folder after day 90 days automatically - so it never fills up.

Upgrading her to the 12 was a nightmare. Wouldn’t do the direct transfer, no room to do an iCloud back up etc. Then I checked her settings and she had 52mb of 64gb left!

once I deleted some junk everything worked fine.

 

[Analog Kid]

I just upgraded to the 13 Pro so gave my 12 yr old daughter my 12.

She previously had the iPhone 8 64gb, had cloud backup turned on and has WhatsApp set to save all media. So her phone was always full, to the extent you couldn’t back it up, install a new iOS etc.

So three days after getting my 256gb iPhone 12 she has about 80gb left.

I’ve never used the iCloud photo backup so don’t really know how that works. Can we buy more space and then set up to auto delete photos older than XXX?

is there a Shortcut that I could down load to remove duplicates etc?

Basically any and all tips (other than getting rid of the child!) are gratefully accepted.

iCloud backup will just give her endless storage to expand into, and eventually start costing you an arm and a leg.

I'm really wary of telling someone how to parent, so please disregard this if I'm crossing a line, but my solution would be to do nothing. Let her fill the phone. Leave her responsible for managing the space. When she complains that she can't take pictures at a birthday party, remind her that you warned her it would happen.

It might also be worth pointing her to some videos by professional photographers describing their workflows for organizing and culling images after a shoot-- engage her as a photographer, rather than a child who refuses to clean her room, and let her learn proper workflows.


I say this as someone who has far too many secondary storage drives keeping all the files that I lack the discipline to curate.

 

[pw5a29]

I just upgraded to the 13 Pro so gave my 12 yr old daughter my 12.

She previously had the iPhone 8 64gb, had cloud backup turned on and has WhatsApp set to save all media. So her phone was always full, to the extent you couldn’t back it up, install a new iOS etc.

So three days after getting my 256gb iPhone 12 she has about 80gb left.

I’ve never used the iCloud photo backup so don’t really know how that works. Can we buy more space and then set up to auto delete photos older than XXX?

is there a Shortcut that I could down load to remove duplicates etc?

Basically any and all tips (other than getting rid of the child!) are gratefully accepted.

turn off whatsapp auto save? especially an extra copy to the camera roll?

With that saving pace, she would ran out of space of a 1TB in a month

 

[smoking monkey]

I'm really wary of telling someone how to parent, so please disregard this if I'm crossing a line, but my solution would be to do nothing. Let her fill the phone. Leave her responsible for managing the space. When she complains that she can't take pictures at a birthday party, remind her that you warned her it would happen.

It might also be worth pointing her to some videos by professional photographers describing their workflows for organizing and culling images after a shoot-- engage her as a photographer, rather than a child who refuses to clean her room, and let her learn proper workflows.


I say this as someone who has far too many secondary storage drives keeping all the files that I lack the discipline to curate.

I tried that with the wife... Doesn't work! Haha. As the household tech advisor, I just have to hear about it more!

 

[mk313]

I don’t know if a setting to auto delete after 90 days or whatever but it would be pretty simple to set up another user account on your mac (assuming you have a mac) and log in with her credentials. Then open the photos app and select all the photos before a certain date and delete them )when you delete they actually sit in the trash for another 30 days before they actually disappear-not sure how that impacts storage).

I’d definitely start with increasing iCloud storage space and see how it goes. I have family sharing turned in and lay $10/month for storage, and share that with my wife and her sister. The three of us have only used 500 MB of the 2 gigs so far. I think it would last your daughter and you guys quite a while before you had to delete anything. You could probably set a yearly reminder to delete photos and it would be ok. (Although I have no idea about the what’s app media backup and how fast that would grow)

 

[ericwn]

As was said before you cannot have the cloud automatically delete images older than x amount of days - it is meant as a photo storage solution.

Now the tricky part as with many things in life is to manage one’s resources responsibly. We all have to sit down with our images once in a while and sort out the not so good ones.

 

[akash.nu]

WhatsApp is your culprit. iCloud or any other cloud backup generally just works with the photos app directly. Even with iCloud backup turned on for WhatsApp it’ll just store all the media coming via WhatsApp on the device. So the best option is to not have auto save and instruct your daughter to manually save only the items she wants to the photos app directly which will use iCloud backup and free up space as needed by iOS.

 

[lkalliance]

iCloud Photo Library does not auto-delete. But using it, you can set your phone to store optimized photos of the library. The phone will then store very lo-res images, while the full-sized images will be in iCloud.

If she ever taps to view a photo, then the phone downloads the full-sized version for her to view. After some amount of time, if she has not viewed the full-sized photo in a while, the phone will remove it, leaving the small version.

This is part of iOS’s method of managing your storage: if you are using iCloud Photo Library, and have optimization turned on, it can be more aggressive at removing photos, if it needs to.

Question for WhatsApp users (and Messages, I suppose): when WhatsApp saves each photo to her photo library, is it ALSO keeping the full res copy for itself? If so, then cloud storage of her photo library is only part of the solution.


EDITED TO ADD DATA:
I just checked my iPhone and iCloud storage. I currently have a hair under 12,000 photos and videos on my iPhone. I use iCloud Photo Library, and I haven't recently been doing a lot of photo browsing on my phone. It currently lists my photo library (including the videos) as taking up 17.5 GB on my phone. The full-sized library, in iCloud, is taking 128 GB.

 

[deeddawg]

There's no autodelete function as far as I'm aware.

If you add additional icloud storage, she'll eventually fill it up and you'll be back where you started.

Generally speaking, kids (and adults) won't change behavior until/unless their current habits create sufficient discomfort/inconvenience that they choose to make that change.

Had this been a thing when my kids were that age, I'd have allowed them however much iCloud storage they wished to pay for with their own funds and otherwise leave the situation be.