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iPhone 13 Pro Max Photos not optimizing storage with new iPhone

I had the same issue. iPhone storage was showing about 40 gigs of photos stored in new iPhone. Should’ve been zero since I hadn’t taken any new photos and all photos are in iCloud.

Originally I had transferred the data from old iPhone to new iPhone, I think it also transferred the photos that I had downloaded to my old iPhone.

So I reset my new iPhone and restored from iCloud backup, it fixed the issue. All my photos are in iCloud now. iPhone storage doesn’t show any local stored photos. I guess it will show the new photos that I take on iPhone from now on

Restoring from iCloud backup also fixed the issue to unlock iPhone with Apple Watch wearing a mask.
 
For those that have restored from iCloud to fix the problem - did you use a current backup or an older one?
 
For anyone that said restoring from a backup resolved the issue, did the photos app stay at a small size after a day or two or did it blow back up to a large number?
 
Got the new phone today and also noticed this problem. Really not looking to have to reset the phone at all. So, my question is has anyone who just left it alone actually ran out of space? I suppose I'm okay with what Apple told some of the person here, that the phone is simply more aggressive at keeping photos but will clean up when space is tight. Getting to old to stress about this, as long as it doesn't actually run out space, I'm just going to leave it be.
 
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Something weird is going on with the total space used calculation. My photos usage has held steady at around 45GB, but my overall usage has been decreasing and now says it has 55GB total used with almost 20GB of messages and 5GB saved music, not to mention all the apps?? Seems like the photos usage is just wildly inaccurate.
C7BC9B88-ED80-46E5-839D-5CBBFB2341F4.png
 
My photos continues to
aajeevlin said:
Got the new phone today and also noticed this problem. Really not looking to have to reset the phone at all. So, my question is has anyone who just left it alone actually ran out of space? I suppose I'm okay with what Apple told some of the person here, that the phone is simply more aggressive at keeping photos but will clean up when space is tight. Getting to old to stress about this, as long as it doesn't actually run out space, I'm just going to leave it be.
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My phone keeps increasing the amount of used space each night. I have about 14GB /128 left, so we’ll see what happens if this continues…
 
I don't use iCloud Photos always kept photos on device. Going from 12 Pro to 13 Pro the photos category doubled in size and hasn't changed for over a week. I see lots of posts about this being something with iCloud Photos. In my case since I don't use iCloud Photos there is something seriously not right with how the 13 Pro is handling storage.

I am on 15.1 Beta 2. Still totally hosed.
 
penrua said:
No word back just yet - they promised a response within 24 hours so hopefully by lunch today.

My photos has grown from 66.8GB to 69.79GB - a difference of +3GB. Since Monday night, I have taken several photos & videos, but have kept a total of 2mins of video and 12 photos.

I wonder does Recently deleted factor into the phone storage used.
Click to expand...

Apple Support came back to me, but I'm not sure what their solution was. I think they checked a setting on my iCloud Storage, and that we'll check back tomorrow.

In the interim, Photos on my phone now takes 78GB. That's +10GB in less than a week.
 
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I just wiped my 13 pro and set up as new (mainly to try and fix an issue with the battery draining excessively overnight) and in the past 24 hours or so since set up, photos has increased to 18GB. I have a feeling that number will continue to grow...
 
I have the same issue on my iPad Air 4 and iPhone 12 Pro Max. I wiped them both to start "fresh" on iOS 15 and restored without a backup.

Before iOS 15 I had 102 GB free on my 128 GB iPhone with 4 GB "locally" stored photos (rest being in the iCloud). After restoring the iPhone, I have had only 64 GB free with Photos suddenly taking a huge junk.

Therefore I wanted to test something on my iPad and thus deactivated iCloud Photo Library and deleted every single photo from the iPad. HOWEVER, the storage still claims that I have 8 GB of photos on the device even though there was not a single photo on it. Not really knowing what to do about that, I activated iCloud Photo Library again and "Photos" is taking less space, however ... now I have a huge amount of "Others" instead.

No idea what is going on there.

Prior to this (already on iOS 15) I have noticed that my MacBook asked me to import thousands of photos from my device when plugged in, even though those images have already been on iCloud for years. Why was it even asking me to import photos when iCloud Photos was activated. I dont think it should even be asking since everything is supposed to be in sync automatically? (iCloud Photos is obviously activated on my Mac as well)
 
penrua said:
Apple Support came back to me, but I'm not sure what their solution was. I think they checked a setting on my iCloud Storage, and that we'll check back tomorrow.

In the interim, Photos on my phone now takes 78GB. That's +10GB in less than a week.
Click to expand...

Another call back from Apple Support.

They had me check my storage again (now at 79.41GB - that's +1.41GB in 24 hours where I've taken 2 photos and one 20 second video).

They had me check the storage on my old XR and update that to iOS 15.0.1 and will call me back on Thursday.
 
contacos said:
I have the same issue on my iPad Air 4 and iPhone 12 Pro Max. I wiped them both to start "fresh" on iOS 15 and restored without a backup.

Before iOS 15 I had 102 GB free on my 128 GB iPhone with 4 GB "locally" stored photos (rest being in the iCloud). After restoring the iPhone, I have had only 64 GB free with Photos suddenly taking a huge junk.

Therefore I wanted to test something on my iPad and thus deactivated iCloud Photo Library and deleted every single photo from the iPad. HOWEVER, the storage still claims that I have 8 GB of photos on the device even though there was not a single photo on it. Not really knowing what to do about that, I activated iCloud Photo Library again and "Photos" is taking less space, however ... now I have a huge amount of "Others" instead.

No idea what is going on there.

Prior to this (already on iOS 15) I have noticed that my MacBook asked me to import thousands of photos from my device when plugged in, even though those images have already been on iCloud for years. Why was it even asking me to import photos when iCloud Photos was activated. I dont think it should even be asking since everything is supposed to be in sync automatically? (iCloud Photos is obviously activated on my Mac as well)
Click to expand...
I noticed this as well about photos on my computer asking to import from my iPhone. Never seen that before.
For what it’s worth, I did a wipe and start fresh on my 13 pro. In addition to fixing battery drain issues, photos usage seems to have stabilized around 18GB, which is way better than the 45GB before, but still not great.
 
Ditto here. My photo library on my 13 Pro Max is doing the same. The library appears to have been copied over in full resolution. Have tried toggling the optimize switch in iCloud Photos without success.

On my 12 Pro Max photos is using 15g optimized. On my 13 Pro Max 90g. Hope there’s a fix. Don’t really want to wipe and start over.
 
Sailormannn said:
Ditto here. My photo library on my 13 Pro Max is doing the same. The library appears to have been copied over in full resolution. Have tried toggling the optimize switch in iCloud Photos without success.

On my 12 Pro Max photos is using 15g optimized. On my 13 Pro Max 90g. Hope there’s a fix. Don’t really want to wipe and start over.
Click to expand...
I saw a couple suggestions on this forum to try a wipe then restore from iCloud backup, which I have not tried yet until yesterday. So far so good! But I thought that before… I’ll know for sure if it’s the same in a couple days!
 
Just noticed it's doing the same thing on my new iPad mini 6. It was restored from an iCloud Back-up. I haven't tried deleting the photos and redownloading from iCloud yet to see if that makes a difference.

This must be a bug as setting the switch to optimize should work if the photos are all full resolution on the deice.
 
How much storage space are you guys showing being used for iOS 15.01?
 

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