How Can I Free Up iCloud Storage When My Devices Have Plenty of Space?

Unfortunately, there's no automatic feature that will help balance your photos between iCloud and your phone. It's either stored in iCloud or on your device. You might try cleaning up other iCloud sections, like iCloud Drive, Mail, and Messages. However, if you need more space, the safest bet is to consider upgrading your iCloud storage. Many users have lost important photos or notes after turning off iCloud syncing, so it's a risk.

The Photos app doesn't balance storage automatically as you thought. What it does is allow you to optimize storage on your devices. This means that when your device runs low on space, it offloads less accessed media to iCloud but keeps placeholders on your device. It’s not a solution if you want to completely manage storage yourself. If you want to clear out some iCloud space, check out Apple's support resources for managing storage, but remember that you'll need to do it manually.

Just to clarify, iCloud Photos is more of a sync service—it doesn’t quite balance your storage as you hoped. The optimize storage feature has its own rules where it stores high-res versions in iCloud and keeps low-res ones on your device. If you're looking to balance things out, increasing your iCloud space might be the way to go, since it seems like a lot of users end up doing that.