Optimize iPhone Storage explained: where your photos go, and how to get them back

Date:
Sat, 14 Oct 2023 17:00:00 +0000

Description:
Here's everything you need to know about Optimize iPhone Storage, Apple's handy way to free up space in your iPhone.

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If youve ever owned an iPhone in your lifetime, chances are youll be familiar with the following message: iPhone Storage Full. You can free up space on
this iPhone by managing your storage in Settings. Cue expletive.

In recent years, Apple has done a nice job of improving the way iPhone
storage is displayed and managed, but if youre someone who likes to take
snaps and screenshots of anything and everything you see and lets face it, who isnt these days? then maxing out your iPhones camera roll remains a distinct possibility.

Thankfully, Apple introduced a handy way of optimizing photos (i.e. compressing them to save storage) back in 2017. Appropriately dubbed Optimize Photos or Optimize iPhone Storage, if your iPhone is running an older
version of iOS this setting, which can be found by navigating to Settings > General > iPhone Storage, promises to free up huge chunks of space in your iPhones hard drive.

But what does Optimize Photos actually mean for all your precious images?
Once you hit that shiny button, where do these photos go? And more importantly, how do you get them back? Allow us to explain.

Per the note displayed under the setting itself, Optimize Photos means full-resolution photos and videos are safely stored in iCloud, and your
iPhone will use smaller-size versions. As a reminder, iCloud is Apples cloud-based platform for securing and transferring data between Apple
devices. Once you activate Optimize Photos, youre still able to access photos in their original, full-res format, but youll need to download them individually (from iCloud) as and when you want them.

Obviously, the big advantage of Optimize Photos is that large-file photos are converted to small-file photos, thus freeing up iPhone storage. And,
depending on how many images you have stored up in your camera roll, the savings can be huge. In my iPhone, for instance, Optimize Photos would free
up 28.88GB of storage thats enough to download another 5000 songs on
Spotify, or around 25 90-minute movies on Netflix. (Image credit: Future / Axel Metz)

As weve mentioned, the disadvantage of Optimize Photos is that, in order to get your full-res photos back, youve got to download them from iCloud. On the surface, this isnt a difficult process. The small-res versions in your camera roll are more like thumbnails clicking on an image will automatically load
up a full-quality version to be viewed and shared, before your iPhone
offloads that image back to the cloud later on. So far, so good. The big downside is that this process requires an internet connection. And a fast
one, too.

If youre at home, in the office, or out and about in a city with plentiful 4G (or 5G) coverage, it wont take long for your iPhone to load up a full-quality version of the image you want to see. However, if youre commuting, on a flight, in an area with poor internet coverage, or even abroad (where
internet can be expensive), your iPhone might struggle to download the image (if it can download it at all). In other words, Optimize Photos locks your photos away in a safe that can only be opened with a strong internet connection.

For most people, this wont be a problem but its worth bearing in mind before you cash in on the promise of more iPhone storage. Its also worth noting that youll need to have enough spare iCloud storage to accommodate the large photo files that Optimize Photos converts. If not, youll be met with a message
thats just as annoying (if not more) than that iPhone storage warning: iCloud Storage Is Full.

To avoid that problem, here are five tips on how to free up iCloud storage . And if youre interested in what that pesky Other category refers to in your iPhone storage settings, heres what Other storage is and how you can delete
it . You might also like I tried Apple's new USB-C EarPods with iPhone 15 and I wanted to ... iPhone 15 review: new to the Island iPhone 15 Pro Max review: the best just got better iPhone 15 Pro review: pocket paragon I'm a photographer and will be skipping the iPhone 15 Pro Max ...



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/optimize-iphone-storage-explained


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