iCloud Photo Library and optimize photos. One tricky question.

[e270889o]

Hello.

Im using iCloud Photo Library and its great. Ive reduced my library from almost 3gb to no more than 250mb.

But i have a cuestion.

Each time i wanna see a photo, i see the low quality version, and it takes few seconds to download the full-size photo. Is ok

But..... This fullsize photo will be always in my iphone?

I mean. The photos that I've already see, or send, doesn't download again. Every time i wanna see them, they dont need to be downloaded again.

It is any way to clear that "full-size cache" of pictures or it will be clear in X time automatically.

I hope you understand my question and sorry about my grammar.

Thanks

 

[sunfire7]

Nobody knows
I suspect it's like itunes match, it will be deleted automatically when you are running out of space.. I wish they add a button to do it manually but It's not likely

 

[sdilley14]

Nobody knows
I suspect it's like itunes match, it will be deleted automatically when you are running out of space.. I wish they add a button to do it manually but It's not likely

What he said.

I suspect that it gets stored in the myserious "Other" space on the iPhone and just sits there, or it eventually deletes itself out after a set period of time without being accessed.

 

[flashflooder]

AFAIK, the storage it uses is labelled as "Photos", not "Other".
I also suspect it gets wiped after a certain amount of time. Not sure on that one.

 

[crashoverride77]

Hello.

Im using iCloud Photo Library and its great. Ive reduced my library from almost 3gb to no more than 250mb.

But i have a cuestion.

Each time i wanna see a photo, i see the low quality version, and it takes few seconds to download the full-size photo. Is ok

But..... This fullsize photo will be always in my iphone?

I mean. The photos that I've already see, or send, doesn't download again. Every time i wanna see them, they dont need to be downloaded again.

It is any way to clear that "full-size cache" of pictures or it will be clear in X time automatically.

I hope you understand my question and sorry about my grammar.

Thanks

Like people have said here it will probably delete itself after a while or when low on space. Apple hasn't really explained at all how optimisation works. I wish we could clear the space ourselves in usage settings. You can turn off IPL in settings and than delete manually form the camera roll and than turn IPL back on, but it's a hassle.

Same annoyance for iCloud music/videos, with iOS 8 you cannot clear your music cache (when you listen to songs, not when you manually download) like you used to with iOS 7. You have to sign out and back in to the App Store when you listen to a lot songs and want to clear the cache to free up space.

 

[e270889o]

Thanks guys

 

[bgro]

If i take a pic on my iPhone that has IPL turned on with the "Optimize" setting, does that actual photo get optimized meaning the high res is uploaded to iCloud and the image on my device is replaced with a low res version?

That is how i thought it works but is not the behavior i'm experiencing. All of my photos are optimzed on my iPad but not on the device i took the actual photos on (my iPhone)

 

[indefinitekarma]

If i take a pic on my iPhone that has IPL turned on with the "Optimize" setting, does that actual photo get optimized meaning the high res is uploaded to iCloud and the image on my device is replaced with a low res version?

That is how i thought it works but is not the behavior i'm experiencing. All of my photos are optimzed on my iPad but not on the device i took the actual photos on (my iPhone)

Unfortunately nobody knows. I've done extensive testing with this and I can't seem to get any straight answers.

Here are some facts:

• Photos are taken on a device always have the hi-res versions uploaded to iCloud Photo Library.
• When a device wants to view a picture thats on iCloud Photo Library it downloads the hi-res photo if it doesn't already have it.

There are some unknowns at this point:

• Currently if I take a photo with my iPhone, it keeps the hi-res photo on my phone instead of converting it to low-res. When does this conversion take place (if at all)?
• Additionally once a photo is downloaded from iCloud Photo Library to a different device, it keeps the hi-res photo on the device and so far has yet to convert it back to low-res. Same question as above.

My theories:

• Although I haven't been able to confirm either: I believe photos both have a date timeout for storage of the hi-res version (~30 days) as well as, if the phone runs out of space it will remove hi-res versions of photos to relieve the stress on the storage a bit.