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iPhone 13 Pro Max Photos not optimizing storage with new iPhone

vtboyarc

vtboyarc

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 12, 2011
833
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Hey all!
So I got the iPhone 13 Pro Max. My iPhone 12 Pro Max had 67gb of spaced used on it.
I did the transfer to the new iPhone, and now it has a whopping 232gb of used space. Looking at iPhone storage, it’s due mainly to photos. I do have “optimize iPhone storage” turned on under Photos settings, but it’s not effecting anything. Has anyone dealt with this and have a solution?
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I have the same issue on my iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro 11" after updating to iOS 15 both claim over 10GB of photos when I actually only have about 1GB of photos in iCloud.

Both devices now show Zero KB in the System Data section of the iPhone and iPad storage so thinking perhaps its mislabelled what's in System Data as Photos for some reason.

Usually the System Data increases a lot after a software update then shrinks after a week post update or that's how its behaved for years on my devices.
 
Same problem as well, also have the issue with music and lossless (i knew they were bigger on storage but not 70gb). iphone 12 pro uses 130 gb, iphone pro is 240gb,
 
iPhone vs iPad. Look at photos section. Same iCloud account same photos settings
 

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When I clicked to leave originals and then to optimize I have 10gb more photos 😅
 

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Same problem here - on iPhone 12 Pro I was using only 6GB of Photos storage, that leapt to 64GB on iPhone 13 Pro after device-to-device transfer. Figuring something had gone wrong with the process I erased the 13 Pro then did an iTunes encrypted backup/restore instead, but still inflated Photos storage. It has since come down to around 24GB but that's still 18GB more than it should be.
 
Same here on the 13Pro. My 11Pro had about 140GB free, but the 13Pro ended up with only 55GB free after restoring from the same iCloud backup.
 
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Same issue as well on the 13 Pro... have been trying to turn off iCloud Photos (and delete photos from phone) but after re-enabling and choosing optimize storage still shows no change in space.
 
Same here. Also weird storage levels for System Data. And my wife’s phone shows nothing at all for Photos. Maybe a system storage bug?
 
TonyC28 said:
Same here. Also weird storage levels for System Data. And my wife’s phone shows nothing at all for Photos. Maybe a system storage bug?
Click to expand...
My system data was shown as 50gb but then after everything fully populated (keeping the page open for a few minutes) it seemed to go down to 0. Unless, the bug is causing system data to somehow appear as photo storage..
 
I think iPhone 13 pro is doing something all the time - it gets a little warm, and storage is different every couple of minutes. Have it from Friday, today I changed photos settings to keep originals and back - to optimize a while later. Since then it’s doing something. Battery also see a hit. I plugged it for now. I’ll wait and see.
 
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I’m having this issue to a certain extent too. On my 64GB 6s photos only took up about 3GB (I only had about 10GB free, so maybe that’s it). On my 13 Pro they’re now taking up over 30GB, although I have 200+ GB on iCloud, so I guess it could be worse!
 
is it possible the process is to first download the whole collection to the device but then remove it as it goes through the space optimization??.....my photo collection now taking 120gb on my 13 pro max...I have a tonne of videos but those were in icloud before...I feel like they've been downloaded to the device...
 
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Happens on mine too, they used to only take up about 6GB with 80GB in the cloud, now it's 22GB. Maybe it downloads all over time to analyse them, then boot them off later.

My "other" also went to 18GB before reverting to the usual 8GB after two days.
 
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Ries said:
Happens on mine too, they used to only take up about 6GB with 80GB in the cloud, now it's 22GB. Maybe it downloads all over time to analyse them, then boot them off later.

My "other" also went to 18GB before reverting to the usual 8GB after two days.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think I’m gonna give my phone a week or so before doing anything drastic. Also noticed that photos seems to be using a decent amount of battery so I also wonder if it’s doing some sort of analysis in the background.
 
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Not sure if its related but after adding the iPhone 13Pro OR iOS15 then my Photos Face matching was completely tanked. People went from 18000 matched to 220 and no new matches have shown up for days. Macs and iOS devices just seem stalled so maybe something is going on with Photos.
 
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So I have no proof of this, but I always thought Optimize Photos meant that iOS would free up photos if more space is needed for other things. Meaning there isn’t a set formula for how many photos to keep on your iPhone. So I wouldn’t worry about it. If you add a bunch of movies I would bet you’d see the space used by photos go down.
 
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