HT204570 icloud photo library, yet storage almost full

iPhone 6, latest iOS. I recently went all in with icloud photo. I pumped over 20,000 photos and videos into the cloud. But it seems that I the automatic allocation of storage space is not getting it quite right. I am talking about space on my phone, not cloud. This morning my phone is warning me "storage almost full". But, photos is using 3.5Gb of space. Seems if my phone is sop low on storage (155Mb currently), instead of prompting me to manage the situation it should free some space by purging old media.
This is a big problem. The other day I was trying to take a video and it refused, stating that I was out of storage space. In the past I used to manually pull all the photos and videos from my phone and put them in my iPhoto library on my Mac. Now I can't do that. So, but purchasing 500Gb cloud storage and moving 20,000 photos into that space, I kind of screwed myself. My wife is going through the same thing. I decided to move us into the cloud to eliminate the headache associated with having to manually manage storage due to photo and video consuming lots of space. Now, because iCloud Photo doesn't manage it correctly I need to manage it manually. Only problem, I can't. This make s my phone nearly useless.
Anybody else going through this? Is there a solution? One coming? Can it really be this broken? Even my Mac is struggling with this problem. I should be able to limit the size of the local library at the very least.
Paul

I've had a similar problem. For me the best solution is to save the photos to my Mac, and then delete them from my phone. This does not however solve the problem with not wanting them to be gone on other devices. Unfortunately, I do not know of a way to exclude a device from having the photo deleted off of it (Wink*Wink* Apple- iOS 9/OS X 10.11? Cough*Cough*). Anyway as for saving space, for me, if I turn off iCloud photo library and then turn it back on again, it will make a lot of space open up. Note: still not total space. I assume that you have a lot of music/photos/apps or something because I have this problem on my 16 GB iPhone, but I don't see how a 64 Gb iPhone can accidentally run out of room. In conclusion, try turning off iCloud Photo Library on and off again. This is my best solution, and it works for me pretty well. Anyway, I hope this helped.

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HT204570 iCloud photo library taking up all available iPhone storage

Recently upgraded from iPhoto to iCloud Photo library. It's great, except that it's now taken up all available storage space on my iPhone and I can't even take additional pictures on it. If I delete any pics from my iPhone (to try and free up space), it deletes them from my library and from all of my other devices (Mac mini, MBP, iPad, etc.). I don't want to get rid of the photos, I just want to remove some from the iPhone so that I can actually use the phone. My iCloud Photo library is rather large, and I pay for additional iCloud storage just to be able to accommodate it, but understandably so, my iPhone storage can't accommodate the full library, and I wouldn't expect it to, either.

I've had a similar problem. For me the best solution is to save the photos to my Mac, and then delete them from my phone. This does not however solve the problem with not wanting them to be gone on other devices. Unfortunately, I do not know of a way to exclude a device from having the photo deleted off of it (Wink*Wink* Apple- iOS 9/OS X 10.11? Cough*Cough*). Anyway as for saving space, for me, if I turn off iCloud photo library and then turn it back on again, it will make a lot of space open up. Note: still not total space. I assume that you have a lot of music/photos/apps or something because I have this problem on my 16 GB iPhone, but I don't see how a 64 Gb iPhone can accidentally run out of room. In conclusion, try turning off iCloud Photo Library on and off again. This is my best solution, and it works for me pretty well. Anyway, I hope this helped.

HT204570 iCloud Photo Library Update Failing

I have a large library of photos that I'm adding to iCloud --17K+ from my MacBook Pro (running Yosemite). The upload is failing, though, and I'm getting pretty frustrated. The upload appears to be working for a few minutes and then randomly, and for no apparent reason, iCloud Photo Library disables itself (unchecked) and the updating is paused. I have the ability click the Resume button but it doesn't resume the upload-- it still indicates that "iCloud Photo Library updating is paused". Restarting the Photos app is the only way to continue the upload, but eventually, it fails. See the screenshot attached -- I've clicked "Resume" but apparently the upload is still on paused.
Any advice or guidance would be very greatly appreciated!

I've had a similar problem. For me the best solution is to save the photos to my Mac, and then delete them from my phone. This does not however solve the problem with not wanting them to be gone on other devices. Unfortunately, I do not know of a way to exclude a device from having the photo deleted off of it (Wink*Wink* Apple- iOS 9/OS X 10.11? Cough*Cough*). Anyway as for saving space, for me, if I turn off iCloud photo library and then turn it back on again, it will make a lot of space open up. Note: still not total space. I assume that you have a lot of music/photos/apps or something because I have this problem on my 16 GB iPhone, but I don't see how a 64 Gb iPhone can accidentally run out of room. In conclusion, try turning off iCloud Photo Library on and off again. This is my best solution, and it works for me pretty well. Anyway, I hope this helped.

Does iPhoto 9.6 work with iCloud Photo Library at all?

I have iOs 8.1, but I have not enabled iCloud Drive or iCloud Photo Library yet, and I have not updated to Yosemite yet. I don't want to activate those until I know how photos between thee mac and iPhone will work after they are enabled.
Does iPhoto 9.6 interact at all with iCloud Photo Library? Does it even "see" iCPL photos similar to PhotoStream? Can it import from there? Do any of the crops and edits come through in iPhoto from the iOS photos app (whether imported from the iCPL or even via direct d/l from the phone via usb?

So what are you guys doing to manage your photos until the OSX Photos app come out? Just not using iCloud Photo Library at all I assume?
Can you use iCloud photo library but still manually import photos into iPhoto from USB import?
You can view your iCloud Photo Library (Beta) and download from iCloud Photo Library (Beta) at https://beta.icloud.com or https://www.icloud.com on your Mac, if you click the "Photos" icon. Click the "?" mark, to view the help for "Photos". But you cannot yet upload directly from your Mac to this library, even if the iCloud Photos Help is saying otherwise.
You can download to your mac from your devices using USB, but with iCloud Photo Library (Beta) enabled on your iPad or iPhone, you can no longer sync photos to them using iTunes Photo sync. So it is hard to get any photos onto your devices at the moment, other than using Photo Stream. To upload photos to your iPad/iPhone using iTunes you have to disable iCloud Photo Library. And the synced photos will be erased, when you enable iCloud Photo Library again.

Mac storage full during upload to iCloud Photo Library

MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013)
1.3 GHz Intel Core i5
4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Intel HD Graphics 5000 1536 MB
OS X 10.10.3
I'm uploading my Photos Library to the iCloud Photo Library because I don't have enough space left in my Mac (around 7 GB left).
When I started uploading, it went down to 3 GB, and now stopped uploading because Photos is telling me that "Your Mac Storage is full. This Mac is no longer updating because there is not enough space to store optimized versions of your photos and videos."
I don't understand why it's taking up space when it's supposed to minimize space taken by my library.
I have upgraded my iCloud Storage to 200GB, so there should be no problem with that (iPhoto Library is only ~120GB)
Would appreciate any help!

Hey benjfromlewes. Thanks for helping out!
Something pretty neat seems to happening when Photos creates its library from iPhotos because my machine didn't have anything like enough storage to achieve this (I had about 15 Gig free, and my iPhotos library was about 100 Gig). I suspect that it Photos probably shares the images files with iPhoto in some way, but I don't know. Anyway – removing the iPhoto library did still fee up lots of space for me.
I was thinking about deleting the old iPhoto Library, but then (like what you think) it seems that Photos and iPhoto are sharing files, even though they're separate. Because I only had 7 GB left when I updated to Photos and that created ~100 GB library, so it's impossible that I have an invisible extension.
I can't wait to delete it though, but I think I'll wait until after uploading everything to the cloud--just to be extra sure.
I'm don't know why Photos increases its storage requirement during the upload phase. Perhaps it has to keep all the original images locally until they are all uploaded, rather than removing the high quality images as it goes along. I've decided to keep the high resolution images locally anyway now: they're useful for printing and such.
It's working again now, I deleted some movies and restarted. This increased my space to 5.5 GB. I've been monitoring it since and noticed that Photos brought it down to 4 GB, going up and down slightly from there. But it hasn't stopped since. Hoping it'll continue on like this and not require any more space.

Moving Photos from iCloud Photo Library to Local Storage

Scenario - I've a fully migrated library of photos/videos using iCloud Photo Library on iPhone and Mac. It's near the limit of the iCloud storage plan I purchased and want to retain. I'd like to move older and less frequently used content from iCloud Photo Library to more permanent archival storage.
[This is for two reasons. First, I prefer to use the Full Resolution setting on mobile devices, and that will be impossible as the entire library grows beyond the storage capacity of even the largest mobile devices. Second, I don't feel the need to pay for super-sized iCloud storage for content rarely needed and only needed on a Mac.]
The only option I've identified in Photos to do this is to Export (and delete from iCloud), which exports the original photos, but does not preserve useful Photos metadata and organization, such as Albums.
What one would might like to see is a way to designate selection portions of the Library for local storage only (including backup within the Photos app library package), so those photos can be manipulated within Photos alongside iCloud content, but don't consume iCloud or mobile device space. Or, in the alternative, one would like to see a way to Export content to merge into a separate Photos library package, preserving the metadata/organization. In that way, one could maintain one Photos library as current iCloud synced content, and one or more local-only Photos library packages with archival content (with, importantly, the Export function to move content between the two preserving metadata).
Does anyone know if there's a way to do this? If not, Apple, would you consider coming up with a way to address this need?

{quote:title=Nissin101 wrote @ 3:36pm EMT:}{quote}
Well I was able to move photos from the camera roll to the photo library by sending *the pictures via email to my dad's blackberry, then saving them to my computer from his phone, then putting them back on into the photo library*.
This is what I said originally.
{quote:title=Nissin101 wrote @ 4:08pm EMT:}{quote}
Alright I guess that answers my question then. However, just as I said I was able to transfer photos from my camera roll to my photo library, so at least that is possible.
I never said that I did it directly, neither did I mean to imply that I was looking for a direct solution. This I guess is where our misunderstanding comes from. I just did not feel like repeating the whole process I went through. Regardless, I would rather this thread not derail into who said what and whose misunderstanding who. I now know that it is not possible to get pictures from the photo library to the camera roll in any way, so my question is answered for now at least.

ICloud Photo library storage optimisation

I cannot make this think work..! Open , close IPL buttons...! but ...! same storage in my iPhone and in my iCloud..!

See the quote below from iCloud Photo Library beta FAQ - Apple Support
That link has some other details but doesn't explicitly state (at least that I could find) how the situation where you have photos from other sources added to iCloud Photo Library are dealt with on your phone if you no longer have space.
How does iCloud Photo Library save space on my device?
If you turn on Optimize [device] Storage, iCloud Photo Library will automatically manage the size of your library on your iOS device, so you can make the most of your device's storage and access more photos than ever. iCloud Photo Library stores the original, high-resolution photos and videos in iCloud and can keep lightweight, device-optimized versions on each of your devices. As long as you have enough storage, recent photos and videos that you access the most will stay on your device at full resolution.
To turn on Optimize [device] Storage on your device, tap Settings > iCloud > Photos or Settings > Photos & Camera, then select Optimize [device] Storage. You need an Internet connection to access an original photo or video that’s stored only in iCloud.

HT204264 iDevice Sync Query - IOS Photos & iCloud Photo Library over filling ipad iphone storage - what happens next?

Device Sync Query - IOS Photos & iCloud Photo Library fills ipad iphone storage - what happens next?
Quick question, when you select IOS Photo / IiCloud storage (photos are optimised etc) what happens when ipad / iphone storage is full and you now need to add new apps, photos etc? In my case I have 3 * 64gb ipads & 2 * 128 gb iphone but these are all filling up with photos since enabling IOS Photo & iCloud Photo Library (as all of my photos on each device are now copbined on every device as well as the cloud). This has become a problem as when I try to sync my idevice I get the device full warning (and I am assuming I now need to delete apps / videos if I want to sync or make more space for new photos etc). As far as I can tell once you enable IOS Photos and iCloud all photos will upload at original resolution and download at idevice resolution and there is no way to select / control the photos you want to keep on phone (eg if you delete photo on phone it will now delete the original on cloud).
Couple of questions / Suggestions:
- Will IOS Photos on IOS device automatically lower resolution of pics or use thumbnails for old photos that are already in icloud to ensure that there is space on device for new photos, apps videos music etc. Eg will old photos that have already been uploaded in icloud be replaced by new apps videos music etc (not sure that the IOS Sync or iCloud currently does this)
- Is there away to limit control or limit the number of IOS photos that sync to each idevice (eg by starring photos)? I had a look and can not see away to select photos you want to keep or remove (without deleting them on cloud). As per above I am hoping that the IOS sync and icloud systems are smart enough to replace Photos that have already upgraded to cloud with a lower quality / thumbnail to make more more room for new photos and apps (but not clear if this occurs)
- If this is a problem now what happens once the new PHOTOS launches for OS Desktop eg will it add in all our photos from iphoto to the icloud then to the idevice as part of the OS PHOTOS UPGRADE. I have 15-30 gb of photos in IPHOTO that are now backing up to icloud, there needs to be away to only select starred photos or albums or every photo try to download to my iphone (which will kill my storage). There also needs to be away to keep photos on idevice (for those times when you do not have internet and can not download from iCloud to iDevice
Apologies if I have missed something obvious and welcome any thoughts & answers.
If there is no solution then Apple needs to look at this and highlight it as a risk to customers who switch as this is being sold as a way to minimise your device storage but can lead to to customers using up more storage for photos on ipad iphone as a result of switch to IOS PHOTOS &
iCloud Photo Library

Things are not as dire as they might seem at first glance. My 66GB iPhoto Library became a 40GB iCloud Photo Library (~11K photos, ~300 videos) and only uses 2.2GB on my iPad and 2.4GB on my iPhone. Scaling that experience, a 64GB/128GB iOS device should be able to easily handle a 300GB iPhoto library. My iPad and iPhone are 32GB devices and I expect them to be livable through at least 30-40K of photos.
16GB devices have always been problematic for space even before iCloud Photo Library so I'd expect anybody with a 16GB device and more than a few thousand photos is not going to be able to use iCloud Photo Library with it. They will have to use iCloud Photo Streaming to get photos to iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Photo Sharing or iTunes syncing to get a subset of photos back to the device. Not a great solution but workable. However, it wrecks one of the best features for me which is using my iPad to edit the photos I take on my iPhone.
The part that worries me is the automatic space management routine. The problem it creates is that I might want to add a movie, but there won't be enough space, and my only option will be to reset iCloud Photo Library on the device to get back to all thumbnails on it to see if that gets me the space I need. I've already had to do it a couple of times with iTunes Match and it's not fun. It all depends on how aggressive Photo Library will be in trimming off full-size photos/videos and Apple appears to be leaving it a black box at this point. It would at least be nice to know an estimate of the minimum size so I know how much space I can recapture.

My iPhone 6 is full even though my photos are being uploaded to iCloud Photo Library. Any recent photos are no longer being uploaded.

My iPhone 6 is full. I have iCloud Photo Library enabled. Any recent photos are no longer being uploaded and are just drawing down my storage. I have "Optimize Phone Storage" enabled.

Open Activity monitor in Utilities, go to the CPU tab>All Processes, and note any process that would appear to be related to importing photos, such as iPhoto, and use Force Quit. This may only be a temporary fix, as it may start all over again when you reboot. If that happens, we need to do some more investigating.
Also, close all open Applications, then open Terminal in Utilities and copy/paste and hit return, then post the output of this command.
lsof -l +L -R -V | grep /

My phone keeps saying "storage almost full" I have 6GB available of phone storage and 4.5GB available of iCloud. Can anyone help me?

My phone keeps saying "storage almost full" I have 6GB available of phone storage and 4.5GB available of iCloud. Can anyone help me? I obviously have space but I don't know whats going on...

The taking of photos requires storage capacity on the phone itself. iCloud storage has nothing to do with picture taking, that is backup storage area. You will have to remove content from the phone to increase storage on the phone to be able to take photos.

How does iCloud Photo Library and Optimize iPhone Storage Work?

Even Apple Phone support can't answer these questions:
How does iCloud Photo Library (Beta) from yesterday's 8.1 update with Optimize iPhone Storage turned on work? (I'm on an iPhone 6)
It only stores your iPhone/iPad versions on your device, which is amazing. Why would you need anything else? It freed up around 8-10GB of space on my device which is amazing. But how does it work when you use it?
When you email it seems to ask you, when sending what size you want to send like it's always done. It gives you the original 2.4MB version. This works like I'd imagine and when I received the test email the photo was correct. In this case I assume it hits iCloud and sends it from there, not your actual device. (Like it doesn't re-download it to email it). Correct?
When posting to Facebook, does it do this same thing? Or is this something Facebook has to build into their iOS app in an update? Or does it just work? Correct?
When posting to Instagram, does it grab the right version. Obviously the phone optimized version should be fine, but when viewing on a Desktop version of Instagram at instagram.com, will it show the right version?
Sometimes I backup photos using Image Capture on the Mac. If I did that right now, would it only grab the iPhone versions? Obviously I can just test it but it'd be amazing if someone who knows these things could explain all of these use cases.
Do you need to be on
In closing it's more of how does this work? Does it work? Why wouldn't you want to use this feature if it saved space and made more sense? I guess I just would love some real clarity since not even the blogs are explaining how it works in every application.
In closing part 2. It does seem to work really well, it's just those fringe cases. I just viewed all my photos on https://beta.icloud.com/#photos and they're all there, easy download of the high res, delete, it deletes from my camera roll on my phone, it's amazing, it works, it's magic. Just tell me what issues there are with storing only low res iPhone on my device and if there are none, game on!
Thanks!

santiagofrommiami wrote:
And of those 4.3GB of backup, my Photo Library is 1.4GB.
So my question is, how do I prevent my Photo Library from being backed up to the cloud, since I already have a backup of it everytime I connect to iPhoto and it copies all those photos to my mac?
I don't know, sorry. It's supposed to work alongside Photos & iCloud, so that photos are stored only once. When it doesn't work you have a couple of options as I see it –
Delete the old backups on iCloud to hopefully start over (I don't like deleting the only backup of anything).
Forget about iCloud backups & use iTunes to backup instead, it might not be suitable if you have no computer etc.
Buy more storage for iCloud.
I don't use iCloud backup, it bemuses me with issues like this, there is no easy way to resolve when it fails.
And one more question while we are at it...can I erase iphoto from my computer now that I have the new Photos app?
That is up to you. If you are happy you do not need it & have a backup of it go ahead & remove it. You can re-download it from the app store if it is already in your Mac App store account.

ICloud photo library and iPhone/iPad storage space

Hi,
I use iCloud photo library beta for some time and it's a great feature for apple product. However, I'm a bit worried about what happend after some time. Now I have 20Gb of storage in iCLoud and 16Gb iPhone 6 and iPad air 2. On both of them is the "optimize iPhone/iPad storage" checked. What will happen after I would put 20Gb of photos to the iCloud and the iPhone and iPad wouldn't have enough storage to handle them (even when the photos are optimize)?
Thanks for any response or a link where it is discussed,
Jakub

Hi jakudo,
"optimize iPad/iPhone storage" means that photos don't have to take any storage capacity of your devices, if you are using your devices storage capacity e.g. for other content like music, apps etc. Your photos will be stored in the cloud and only a some of them are stored locally as long as you have storage space available. The only thing you have to do, is upgrading for more storage as soon as your passing the 20 GB.
With kind regards,
David

ICloud Photo Library and iPhone Storage

How can I delete just the locally stored photos/videos on my iPhone? I am using iCloud Photo Library and just imported thousands of pics into Photos for Mac. Now, my iPhone can "see" my entire photos library, but I have 18GB of 'Photos' locally stored on the phone. I would like to be able to delete the locally stored pics but when I try to delete any image (whether I know it's one that is locally stored or know it is one that is in iCloud), it says, "This photo will be deleted from iCloud Photo Library on all of your devices." I do not want to delete it from iCloud, only my iPhone. Thanks in advance!

yeah, I don't think they are allowing you to do this. You can only optimize the locally stored photos, and if the phone fills up with those, it will then dump some from your phone but keep them in the cloud. Like you, I was hoping that once you store a photo in iCloud, you could remove the local copy of the photo. and worse, if you do start deleting photos from your phone, it sounds like they automatically get deleted off of the cloud, after 30 days that is. Doesn't make sense to me. Finally, on your mac, if you have more photos than you have iCloud photo storage, it just stops syncing, rather than just storing your most recent pics?!?

ICloud photo library and iCloud storage

How do I clear up my iCloud photo library because I uploaded all my photos to my Mac so they're safe and I deleted a lot from my phone because I had no use for them since they're on my computer but I still have like no storage on my iCloud. So is it best that I turn off I loud library to clear and then after 30 days turn it back on ?

yeah, I don't think they are allowing you to do this. You can only optimize the locally stored photos, and if the phone fills up with those, it will then dump some from your phone but keep them in the cloud. Like you, I was hoping that once you store a photo in iCloud, you could remove the local copy of the photo. and worse, if you do start deleting photos from your phone, it sounds like they automatically get deleted off of the cloud, after 30 days that is. Doesn't make sense to me. Finally, on your mac, if you have more photos than you have iCloud photo storage, it just stops syncing, rather than just storing your most recent pics?!?

ICloud photo library uses physical storage on iPad?

I'm confused by exactly what the point of iCloud photo library is since it's using storage on any device I share an album with. Is this a setting that it downloads pictures automatically? I've tested this on my ipad and my wife's, on both devices sharing an album and accepting it used storage.

Thanks for your reply.
Just found an informative article by iMore that kind of explained it in more detail. However, no official documentation from Apple regarding this subject at all, which is frustrating. The claim is that you shouldn't ever have to delete photos for the sake of saving space. It'll just automatically manage your storage for you. I still don't know exactly how.
"iCloud Photo Library's Optimize Storage option automatically and smartly takes a percentage of your device's storage space for high-resolution versions of your photos; any images or video that can't fit in that space are stored as low-resolution thumbnails. This space is variable, too — it doesn't take up every speck of free space you have, instead appropriating a portion of your free space to photo storage, and it adjusts smartly on the fly."
Again, what is the percentage of free storage it uses? 10%? 25%? 60%? We have know way of knowing for now.

HT204570 icloud photo library, yet storage almost full

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