Why is iOS 16 so horrible at Photos storage management?

[Buadhai]

I have an iPhone XR with 64GB of storage. (It was a gift. I never would have bought that small amount of storage for myself.) I also pay for 2TB of iCloud storage. I have iCloud Photos enabled and Optimize iPhone Storage turned on.

Trouble is, it doesn’t "optimize" very well.

The other day at lunch with my wife I wanted to show her some photos I’d taken earlier that day. But, I couldn’t look at or edit full sized versions of any photos because Photos told me there wasn’t enough storage. It also told me that it had stopped syncing with iCloud because of the lack of storage. When I checked my iPhone's storage, it said that 6GB was taken up by photos.

Why couldn’t my phone offload some of that 6GB to free up some storage?

I waited a day but nothing changed. So, I deleted about 3GB of music which, eventually, allowed Photos to operate more normally.

So, who’s doing the storage management?

Me or my phone?

 

[StumpyBloke]

Have you got the correct setting enabled (optimise iPhone storage)?

 

[Buadhai]

I have iCloud Photos enabled and Optimize iPhone Storage turned on.

That’s what I said in the OP. Is there some other setting that I’m missing?

 

[StumpyBloke]

Oh yes sorry, missed that. No idea then I'm afraid but it does indeed look like, along with a huge swathe on iOS 16, that this is another feature that quite simply is garbage.

How much free storage do you actually have on the iPhone? You may also have just reached a natural limitation of 64 GB being nowhere near big enough these days with no work around

 

[Buadhai]

At that time there was no free storage. But, if the OS is managing the storage then shouldn’t it always keep enough free to keep the system running?

It seems a bit lame for the user to have to go in and delete stuff; especially when the OS offers to optimize storage.

 

[StumpyBloke]

Depends on how many apps you have installed as well because it can't optimise those as easily. Maybe offload some you don't use?

 

[Paddle1]

The photos will still take up some space whether optimized or not. How many photos are there and how does the 6GB compare to the amount of storage the same photos take up in iCloud?

 

[minimo3]

Google photos does a much better job of keeping just smaller/low res thumbnails and then loading dynamically when you need just that photo. In fact I think it dynamically loads thumbnails too if you go far enough back in time. I have 20+ years worth and it takes up less space on the phone than iCloud Photos over the last 5 years

 

[Buadhai]

The photos will still take up some space whether optimized or not. How many photos are there and how does the 6GB compare to the amount of storage the same photos take up in iCloud?

There are just over 30K photos and nearly 1K videos in iCloud which take up 96GB of iCloud storage.

Time for a new iPhone.

 

[Buadhai]

I did order an iPhone 14 Pro (256GB). It entered customs in Bangkok this morning so I probably have a few days to wait. In the mean time I've been working to get a better understand of how iOS manages storage.

I'm sure that @Paddle1 is correct that the optimized photos stored on the iPhone take up significant space. That probably accounts for the 6.7 GB of reported Photos storage.

The Health app is taking over 6GB of storage.

I deleted all of the music on my XR, but Music is still consuming 4.25 GB. I suspect that might be because I've "reserved" 4 GB of storage for Music.

System Data was originally taking about 21GB of storage. I deleted some caches and otherwise played with this and now it's down to just over 19 GB. I have no idea what might be in there.

I'm going to post the following as a separate thread, but thought I'd include it here in case someone arrives via a search engine.

Storage Management Wish List:

Photos: I wish there was a setting for something like "Do not optimize any photos taken within the last week (or more)." That would make sure that recent photos remain available for viewing and editing; even when there is no internet. (It has always irritated me that, after a vacation, I can' t view or edit photos while I'm stuck doing nothing on an airplane.)

Music: No complaints here. Storage management for Music seems to work as it should.

Health: There needs to be a way to delete old health data while keeping recent data on the phone. I don't need to know how many steps I took in July of 2020, but I would like to keep records of stuff like blood pressure available for at least the current and previous year. As it is, you can either delete all or nothing. (Am I missing something?)

Apps: Application offloading is a mess. I go for four or five day scuba trips several times a year. I have a number of apps that I only use on those trips. A couple of years ago I was out in the Andaman Sea and when I went to fire up my diving sites app I was appalled to see that it had been offloaded. Same with the eBook reader that I use for my fish and creature ID books. Same with the GoPro app that is essential for setting up the camera . Now I've had to set up a checklist that I use to make sure that essential scuba apps are loaded before I leave. I shouldn't have to do that. I should be able to tell the OS: Never, ever offload this app.

 

[Buadhai]

I did order an iPhone 14 Pro (256GB).

I got the new iPhone Pro (256GB). I transferred everything from my old phone to the new phone. It shows 45GB used out of the 256GB available. So, the new phone, with all the same data, somehow uses 15GB less storage than the old phone. How is that?

Well, because System Data on the new phone is only 3.77GB while the old phone was close to 20GB.

If only there was a way to clear out System Data I could still be using the old phone saving well over a thousand dollars.

 

[FeliApple]

iOS and storage has been the eternal problem. Apple selling low-capacity storage iPhones doesn’t help, either.

I use iPhone 6s on iOS 10. I don’t use many apps, and the most storage-consuming app is music. Now, it’s a 32GB model. I have 20GB of Music downloaded. That, plus a couple other apps, plus system data, doesn’t leave much room for anything. In order not to use the entire storage, I have to download all music, because if I stream it, Apple Music downloads it into the device as cached music, in order to prevent issues if internet speed is too slow (the reason is obvious, they’re preventing lagged playback when internet speed is too low), but there’s no limit. They’ll keep caching songs until the phone runs out of storage, and when it does, good luck clearing that. And that’s with everything. As Apple won’t allow cache clearing, it’s very difficult to manage.

Before you say “you bought a 32GB model, it’s your fault”... I didn’t. I started using that phone years after it was purchased by a family member. My iPhone 6s was the 128GB model. It was on iOS 9, until Apple forced it into iOS 13. Now performance is mediocre at best and battery life is abhorrent, and I am not using that if I can avoid it. Hadn’t Apple forcibly made my iPhone obsolete through that update, I would still be using it for that.

So, yeah, OP, right now it’s currently an unsolvable issue. The only solution is to erase content and settings, start again, and hope the issue doesn’t come back. I love that solution, very helpful, very easy to implement.

 

[fatTribble]

This is a complete guess but I could see even the basic thumbnail type images for 30k photos possibly taking up 6GB. It’s disappointing to me that iOS Photos would just fail. I don’t understand why it would stop syncing for example. Hope you enjoy your new iPhone! 🥳

 

[fatTribble]

Storage Management Wish List:

Photos: I wish there was a setting for something like "Do not optimize any photos taken within the last week (or more)." That would make sure that recent photos remain available for viewing and editing; even when there is no internet. (It has always irritated me that, after a vacation, I can' t view or edit photos while I'm stuck doing nothing on an airplane.)

That’s a great idea! Or let me specify the date and let me see the storage required based on the date.

I’d love the ability to keep full resolution of all photos but keep videos optimized.

How about the ability to keep specific albums in full resolution.

To me the biggest problem with optimize photos is the often laggy performance when trying to browse photos. I totally get that it has to download the photo, but a 5MB photo shouldn’t take 20 seconds on any modern network.

Sorry if I went on too much. This is just an area where I’d love to see a lot of improvement.

 

[minimo3]

I wish there was a way to just rename an image file. I often have to email photos as attachments and they have these long numeric string names. As it is I have to export the photos to my iCloud files folder, rename the file there and then attach the photo to the email. If I try to save the renamed photo back to the photos app it gives it another long numeric name! And this is why I don’t rely on an iPad to do stuff - you can do stuff, it just takes many more clunky steps

 

[Buadhai]

This is a complete guess but I could see even the basic thumbnail type images for 30k photos possibly taking up 6GB. It’s disappointing to me that iOS Photos would just fail. I don’t understand why it would stop syncing for example. Hope you enjoy your new iPhone! 🥳

The new iPhone 14 turns out to be a huge battery and bandwidth hog. I hope this will settle down once all the iCloud syncing is done, but now I have to charge it twice a day. My old XR only needed one charge a day and would last 24+ hours.

 

[fatTribble]

The new iPhone 14 turns out to be a huge battery and bandwidth hog. I hope this will settle down once all the iCloud syncing is done, but now I have to charge it twice a day. My old XR only needed one charge a day and would last 24+ hours.

Like you said, hopefully it’s just the initial downloading and indexing chores that a new iPhone goes through. I try to leave my charging as much as possible for the first few days. Hope it gets better and you enjoy your new iPhone!

 

[mlody]

I have an iPhone XR with 64GB of storage. (It was a gift. I never would have bought that small amount of storage for myself.) I also pay for 2TB of iCloud storage. I have iCloud Photos enabled and Optimize iPhone Storage turned on.

Trouble is, it doesn’t "optimize" very well.

The other day at lunch with my wife I wanted to show her some photos I’d taken earlier that day. But, I couldn’t look at or edit full sized versions of any photos because Photos told me there wasn’t enough storage. It also told me that it had stopped syncing with iCloud because of the lack of storage. When I checked my iPhone's storage, it said that 6GB was taken up by photos.

Why couldn’t my phone offload some of that 6GB to free up some storage?

I waited a day but nothing changed. So, I deleted about 3GB of music which, eventually, allowed Photos to operate more normally.

So, who’s doing the storage management?

Me or my phone?

How much space do you have available on the phone? If zero, then perhaps you hit the point where Apple logic/automations are not able to safely free up anymore of additional space. This means you would need to manually take over and manage until you free up enough.

 

[mlody]

I did order an iPhone 14 Pro (256GB). It entered customs in Bangkok this morning so I probably have a few days to wait. In the mean time I've been working to get a better understand of how iOS manages storage.

I'm sure that @Paddle1 is correct that the optimized photos stored on the iPhone take up significant space. That probably accounts for the 6.7 GB of reported Photos storage.

The Health app is taking over 6GB of storage.

I deleted all of the music on my XR, but Music is still consuming 4.25 GB. I suspect that might be because I've "reserved" 4 GB of storage for Music.

System Data was originally taking about 21GB of storage. I deleted some caches and otherwise played with this and now it's down to just over 19 GB. I have no idea what might be in there.

I'm going to post the following as a separate thread, but thought I'd include it here in case someone arrives via a search engine.

Storage Management Wish List:

Photos: I wish there was a setting for something like "Do not optimize any photos taken within the last week (or more)." That would make sure that recent photos remain available for viewing and editing; even when there is no internet. (It has always irritated me that, after a vacation, I can' t view or edit photos while I'm stuck doing nothing on an airplane.)

Music: No complaints here. Storage management for Music seems to work as it should.

Health: There needs to be a way to delete old health data while keeping recent data on the phone. I don't need to know how many steps I took in July of 2020, but I would like to keep records of stuff like blood pressure available for at least the current and previous year. As it is, you can either delete all or nothing. (Am I missing something?)

Apps: Application offloading is a mess. I go for four or five day scuba trips several times a year. I have a number of apps that I only use on those trips. A couple of years ago I was out in the Andaman Sea and when I went to fire up my diving sites app I was appalled to see that it had been offloaded. Same with the eBook reader that I use for my fish and creature ID books. Same with the GoPro app that is essential for setting up the camera . Now I've had to set up a checklist that I use to make sure that essential scuba apps are loaded before I leave. I shouldn't have to do that. I should be able to tell the OS: Never, ever offload this app.

I like the idea of Photos storage management. My other wish to add is to separate control for pictures and videos. I would like to have full quality pictures on my phones for the last year, but not videos.

 

[Buadhai]

It turns out that the biggest storage hog on my XR was System Data at nearly 20 GB; even after I did some tricks (app cache clearing). On the new 14 Pro, System Data consumes just under 7 GB. What was that extra 13 GB that the XR used?

On the new 14 Pro total storage used is just 51 GB which includes everything that was on the XR, plus a bunch of music and maps that I've downloaded since doing the migration. That's over 10 GB less than the same data used on the XR.

It seems clear that Apple's iOS storage management leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[kjmff5]

Sorry to bring this back to life. I’m having the same issue and wondering if anyone found a fix? I have mine set to optimize storage. Yet taking so much space. 5000 photos 400 videos. Messages is set to 1 year, don’t want to do any shorter than that.