My iCloud photo is eating up my phone storage! Why is it doing this?

[tonyofla]

iCloud photo eating up my phone storage!

Apologies if there is already a thread on this. i've searched for items relating to this topic but can't specific answers.

Here's my problem, and question. I have a 64gb iPhone+ and use iCloud photo. I love the service but I'm getting concerned at the amount of space photos on my phone are starting to take up. I have approx 10,000 photos in my iCloud photo library. My understanding is that iCloud automatically manages storage on different devices, only storing thumbnails to maximise storage - I have opted for this in settings. However, I see my phone storage is gradually and dramatically being eaten up by photos. My total photo storage on my phone is now 12.7GB , it just kept going up and up gradually. Is there any way that I can set a limit on photo storage? I assume not since iCloud photo is supposed to automatically manage it? Before starting to use iCloud photo I used to periodically back up my photos and delete them off my phone. I love using iCloud photo and don't want to turn it off but if it keeps eating my phone storage I'll have to have a rethink .

 

[zerog46]

iCloud photo eating up my phone storage!

As long as you have it to optimize photos on your phone you should be okay. From what I've read if you need more storage for other things it should automatically free up space. I don't use it but that's what I've understood.


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[pappy53]

Re: iCloud photo eating up my phone storage!

You may want to check this out. It's looking like an awesome app.

Google Photos App | POPSUGAR Tech

 

[tonyofla]

Re: iCloud photo eating up my phone storage!

now I wonder if installing the Google Photos app this week is causing my big photo storage jump? Google Photo is uploading photos from my phone. It seems to be accessing my iCloud photos. I assume Google Photos it isn't uploading thumbnails. So is it downloading them at full resolution in order to upload them them to Google? In any case my photos storage on the phone is now a massive 14GB and growing!

 

[gfederline9]

Re: iCloud photo eating up my phone storage!

now I wonder if installing the Google Photos app this week is causing my big photo storage jump? Google Photo is uploading photos from my phone. It seems to be accessing my iCloud photos. I assume Google Photos it isn't uploading thumbnails. So is it downloading them at full resolution in order to upload them them to Google? In any case my photos storage on the phone is now a massive 14GB and growing!

I do find the iCloud Photo Library actually use up more iCloud storage then the original iCloud back up 2-3 years old ( without the new iCloud Photo Library stuff )

but u can buy iCloud storage for quite a cheap price , and Google photos is good

 

[IanRip]

Re: iCloud photo eating up my phone storage!

Icloud will keep a certain amount of your full resolution on the device, using the optimize iphone storage.

Once you reach that limit it will reduce the number of full photo’s, so you will be ok using the icloud set up

the Google app, looks ok so far, but its needs to be tested some more

 

[tonyofla]

Re: iCloud photo eating up my phone storage!

an update on this problem. I recently did a compete restore of my phone and recovered a lot of storage. I was delighted to see that my photo library had come down from 11GB to 2gb. However, once I reinstalled other photo apps, like Flickr and Google Photo, they started once again to upload all my photos. My iCloud photo library rapidly increased from 2bg to 17gb!

Looking at the storage graph in iTunes it shows my photos still at around 2gb but the OTHER segment is around 15gb. If I check storage on the phone, it shows that Photos is 17gb.

So what I have concluded after all this is that other photo apps (like Flickr) when set to back up photos from phone go through the whole library and download or decompress my total Photo library in order to upload it? Is anyone else having an issue with this or has had experience of it?