Phone out of Storage - Options

DUBLIN_person

My girlfriend has an iPhone 11 64GB, the phone has been giving awful problems recently as the storage is very full, to the point where she doesn’t have many apps on it, just a lot of Pictures and Videos, it’s now got to the stage where she can’t use certain apps and can’t take pictures etc and has to restart the phone a few times a day.

Unfortunately she could delete 200 photos and it will not reflect on the memory at all, or what happens sometimes is she will delete the photo’s and they will reappear (presumably re syncing from iCloud)

I am worried if I back up and restore from iTunes to solve the issue the backup file will be larger then the phone’s capacity.

Is there a way to backup photos to ICloud and have them still appear on the phone but not actually stored on it?
Has anyone had a similar problem and come up with a solution to get around it?

Just gone back to Apple myself after 8/9 years of androids so I am not quite up to speed on everything yet - please go easy on me

Have tried Googling, but haven’t got a concrete solution.

Thanks.

Aquos76

Get her to pay for additional icloud storage and turn on icloud photos then, meaning all her photos will be saved in icloud rather than on her device.

https://www.howtogeek.com/408385/what%E2%80%99s-the-difference-between-my-photo-stream-and-icloud-photos/#:~:text=Photo%20Stream%20vs.-,iCloud%20Photos,all%20your%20photos%20in%20iCloud.&text=iCloud%20Photos%20will%20also%20send,that%20everything%20is%20synced%20up.

rizzee

Back up 15gb to Google Photos and delete from photo library?

DUBLIN_person

rizzee wrote: »

Back up 15gb to Google Photos and delete from photo library?

Want’s photos all in one place, that was my suggestion too.

Doodah7

Buy a phone with more storage?

DUBLIN_person

Doodah7 wrote: »

Buy a phone with more storage?

Haha, That’s the most obvious suggestion really... but unfortunately money doesn’t grow on trees

So looking for some stopgap for now, that’s the final straw if no other solution can be found...

murpho999

You have to use cloud services is the way.
Using storage on phone is risky and not sensible.

Also, be ruthless with photos do you need them all?

RoryMurphyJnr

How many photos and videos does she have saved on the phone?
I've an iPhone 8 with 64gb over 6000 photos and still have 30gb free

DuckSlice

Backup photos to iCloud is the thing to do. You don't even notice the photos aren't on the phone as it still shows a preview in you album.

I was constantly fighting for storage on my phone and done this and i now have 25gb-ish free, also 64gb phone.

Doodah7

DUBLIN_person wrote: »

Haha, That’s the most obvious suggestion really... but unfortunately money doesn’t grow on trees

So looking for some stopgap for now, that’s the final straw if no other solution can be found...

There is no stopgap as memory is a finite resource. Her two choices are increase the storage capacity or offload them to the cloud. Why does she need gigabytes and gigabytes of photos stored locally on her phone? That's literally tens of thousands of photos!! No-one could possibly look at them all, let alone find a particular photo without serious meta-tagging.

What happens if the phone is lost?

DUBLIN_person

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, after being android for years, I wasn’t entirely sure what the story is for iCloud, tbh. Bit clearer now on what is possible

ozmo

DUBLIN_person wrote: »

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, after being android for years, I wasn’t entirely sure what the story is for iCloud, tbh. Bit clearer now on what is possible

Photos dont take much space - its the videos. When you have a bit of space - look at how to clip the videos - try to trim videos down to 15 seconds or so. Also take videos in lower resolution not full 4K.


Also - if it downloaded an update - but she hasnt allowed it to do the update. Dont try to apply the update when full - you can go into system and delete the pending update. That will free up couple gigs of memory.


Always think that you could loose the phone/have it stolen/dropped at any time - having that much without backing or archiving away is risky.