I'm really struggling with my iPhone 15's storage. I have 256GB of storage and 100GB of iCloud space, but I can't seem to manage it well. I have around 12 apps (mostly Apple apps, solitaire, and social media) that don't take up much space, but I also have 20,000 photos and videos that supposedly occupy 200GB. Even though I've set my camera settings to the lowest quality to optimize storage, I'm facing a storage nightmare. Every time I try to delete something, it seems to take up even more space, making it impossible for me to access my camera roll. Just recently, I deleted 2 hours of videos, but my storage increased from 253.6GB to 255.78GB! My phone is lagging and overheating, which is so frustrating. I'm even considering switching to a Samsung next year because I've never had this issue with the capacity before. My mom has a Samsung S25 Ultra with the same storage and over 50,000 photos and videos, yet hers uses only 210GB. Is there a way to effectively clear some storage?
4 Answers
Can you check Settings > General > iPhone Storage? That should give you a clearer picture of what's taking up your space. If you can't take a screenshot, maybe snap a photo of the screen with another device. We need to see if it's mostly System Data or if apps and photos are eating up your space.
Having 20,000 photos is definitely going to take up a lot of space! If you're still seeing a lot of storage being used after deleting items, it might be because iCloud isn't fully syncing your photos. Consider upgrading your iCloud plan to give you more space or using an external drive to offload some of your media.
I had a similar situation with my MacBook and ended up using ChatGPT for help, which saved me a trip to a store. Just be careful and don't depend solely on AI for tech issues—it can lead to mixed results!
If you've got too much clutter, you might want to consider transferring your photos to an external storage device. I usually do this every six months via USB-C to my MacPro and an external hard drive. Just batch upload about 250 images at a time to avoid crashing—it can get annoying if you try to do it all at once!
Haha, definitely got to be cautious with AI advice! Thanks for the heads up!