Why Are My iPad Screenshots Using So Much Storage?
Asked by
MellowPebble47
I'm trying to back up about 11,000 pictures from my iPad to my laptop, but I only have around 40 GB of free space available. Surprisingly, just 2,200 images used nearly all of that space. Most of these are screenshots from games, not photos taken with a camera. I'm not using iCloud and don't want to pay for cloud storage. On my laptop, I have folders containing more than 8,000 pictures that take up less than 3 GB, so I'm confused about why these iPad images are so large. Is this normal, and is there a way to reduce their size without badly hurting the image quality?
Answers
The setting about optimizing iPad storage only helps when the originals are stored in a photo cloud library. If you aren’t using that service, changing between ‘download and keep originals’ and an optimized option won’t reduce the size of these local screenshots. You’ll need to export them, compress or convert copies, or store the originals on a larger drive.
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The size isn’t necessarily because they came from an iPad. Screenshots can be saved as large PNG files, especially when they contain detailed game graphics, and 2,200 files using 40 GB works out to roughly 18 MB each. Check whether you have duplicates or unusually large files, but the images may simply be stored in a less-compressed format. You could make a second copy and batch-convert the screenshots to JPEG or WebP to save space, though that can slightly reduce quality and may affect transparency.
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If you don’t want to use cloud storage, an external hard drive is probably the practical solution. Keep one copy on the drive and a second backup on another drive; a USB flash drive can work for a smaller collection, but hard drives usually offer much more capacity for the price. Don’t delete the originals until you’ve checked that the transferred files open correctly.
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