So our device lets you know that it’s almost running out of room to store all those pictures, videos, texts, and what not on your device. And being a good digital citizen, you pay attention and diligently back-up your photos and videos to your computer or another solution then delete them off your device to make room.
But it doesn’t work–your device still shows that its storage is almost full! What gives?
If every time you download an app or take a photo, you are always engaging in a delicate balancing act, hoping that you don’t get the dreaded “Storage is almost full” message., read on for tips on how to finally clear out all that storage and get your device working again!
Contents
- 1 Quick tips
- 2 Look at your Photos App Recently Deleted Album
- 3 Turn on Optimize iPhone Storage
- 4 Are photos from reappearing on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod? Turn off iCloud Photo temporarily
- 5 Restart or force restart AFTER deleting your photos and videos
- 6 Tips for storing your photos and videos
- 6.1 Tip#1 – Connect and external drive to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod and copy your photos and videos to that external drive
- 6.2 Tip# 2 – Upload your Photos to your iCloud account and then you download them to a USB stick for safekeeping
- 6.3 Tip# 3 – Tap on Settings > General > Storage
- 6.4 Tip # 4 – Ever wonder about the “Other” on your status bar that shows how much space is available on your device?
- 7 Wrap Up
Quick tips 
Follow these quick tips to regain storage on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod after deleting photos and videos
- Make sure you remove all the photos and videos from your Photos App Recently Deleted photo album
- Toggle on Optimize Photos for your device’s iCloud Photos setting
- Restart your device after deleting items to free up storage
- Update your device’s iOS or iPadOS to the latest version–use iTunes or Finder if you have a computer
Related articles
- How to backup your iPhone or iPad photos to an external drive with iOS 13 and iPadOS
- How to transfer your photos from iCloud Photos to Google Photos
- The Definitive Guide to iCloud Photos
- Quickly Free Up iPhone and iPad Storage in iOS Settings
- Taking Photo But iPhone Says Storage is Full?
- Free Up iPhone Storage with iOS Tools, Recommendations, and iCloud
Look at your Photos App Recently Deleted Album
As much as you want to keep all those selfies accumulated over the years, you know its time to let some of it go.
You delete all the photos and videos that you do not need in the hopes of getting back some storage on your iPhone only to find that your memory has not moved an inch. Many people have found themselves in this situation, and it can be very frustrating!
When you remove photos and videos from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, they aren’t really deleted immediately!
Instead, Apple puts them into a 30-day hold, just in case you change your mind or accidentally deleted those items.
- So go to Photos > Albums > Recently Deleted
- Select all the photos and videos
- Choose Delete All and delete them from there to truly free up your device’s storage
Just remember that when you use iCloud Photo Library and delete a photo or video from one device, it deletes that photo/video from on your other devices too
iCloud is above all a syncing service, so it adds and removes all the photos and videos from each and every iDevice you sign in to with the same Apple ID. That’s why it’s so important to save those photos and videos somewhere else first before you delete them from ANY device.
Turn on Optimize iPhone Storage 
Another option, especially for folks that purchase iCloud Storage plans, is to keep a smaller compressed version of photos on your device and store the full resolution versions on iCloud. Apple calls this optimizing storage and it’s easy to turn on.
- Open Settings > Photos
- Toggle on Optimize iPhone Storage
When your device gets low on space, iCloud replaces your full resolution photos with these smaller, device-sized versions. And when you edit a photo, it automatically downloads that full-resolution version from iCloud, so you work with the best!
Are photos from reappearing on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod? Turn off iCloud Photo temporarily
If all the photos and videos you deleted reappear, it’s likely an issue with iCloud Photos. So try toggling it off.
Before you turn iCloud Photos off, make sure you back up all these photos and videos to your computer, an external drive, or another backup option, like Google Photos, Dropbox, or your photo/video backup method of choice.
Only after backing up should you turn off iCloud Photos on your iPhone, iPod, or iPad
- Go to Settings > Apple ID Profile > iCloud > Photos
- Toggle off iCloud Photos (also called iCloud Photo Library) and Upload to My Photo Stream
- For folks using iOS 10.2 or earlier, go to Settings > iCloud > Photos
We suggest you wait a few days and turn iCloud Photos back on, if you want to continue syncing between devices signed in with the same Apple ID.
Confused about iCloud Photos?
Okay, you are not alone!
To learn all about how iCloud Photos works, check out our The Definitive Guide to iCloud Photos in 2019
Restart or force restart AFTER deleting your photos and videos
When you delete items, including photos and videos, from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod, they often just marked for deletion by your iOS and iPadOS. The actual removal happens when you power down your device and power it back on–in other words, restarting!
That’s why we always recommend restarting your device after making significant changes to your storage.
To restart an iPhone, iPad, or iPod
- On an iPad with no Home Button and iPhones X or later: press and hold the Side/Top/Power button and either volume button until the slider appears.
- On an iPad or iPhone with a Home Button and iPod Touch: press and hold the Side/Top/Power button until the slider appears
- Drag the slider to turn the device off and after the device turns off, press and hold that Side/Top/Power button again until you see the Apple Logo.
- With iOS 11 and above, restart using Settings > General > Shut Down
And if a restart doesn’t do the trick, try a forced restart.
To force restart your device, follow the directions below for your device and model:
- On an iPhone 8 or above and iPad without a home button: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Then, press and hold the Side/Top button until you see the Apple logo
- On an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus: Press and hold both the Side and Volume Down buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo
- On an iPhone 6s and earlier, iPad with a home button, or iPod touch: Press and hold both the Home and the Top (or Side) buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo
Once you see the logo, let go of the buttons and allow your iPhone to start regularly. You should now be able to see your free storage
Check your device’s storage
After restarting or force restarting, check your storage again.
- Go to Settings > General > Storage and look at the graph
- Another way to check out on the open space equation is to connect your iPhone to your computer and use Finder (macOS Catalina+) or iTunes (macOS Mojave and lower) and check the device’s storage status bar
- You should see that the space for photos would now be much less
Tips for storing your photos and videos
Tip#1 – Connect and external drive to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod and copy your photos and videos to that external drive
This requires iOS 13 and above or iPadOS so update your device to at least those operating systems if possible.
Tip# 2 – Upload your Photos to your iCloud account and then you download them to a USB stick for safekeeping
Tip# 3 – Tap on Settings > General > Storage
- Review the list of apps along with how much storage they use
- Sometimes all you need to do is delete the app and re-install it
- You can also just offload the app but preserve your data if needed
- This often saves a lot of space on your iPhone!
Tip # 4 – Ever wonder about the “Other” on your status bar that shows how much space is available on your device? 
You can use some of the tips on this article to deal with this issue.
Wrap Up
The truth is that Apple needs to stop selling iPhones with under 100GB of memory and make the higher storage iPhone cheaper. Those of us that have the iPhones with less memory (like those older 1GB phones) know precisely what I’m talking about!
We hope that you can finally reclaim some of the space on your iPhone! Please share this article with others that may be facing the space issue on their older iPhones.
When faced with this situation, our first impulse is to prioritize the “stuff” that we have on our iPhone and let go of stuff that we don’t need anymore.
You start looking through the apps and deleting the ones that you have not used in years or months.
If you are in this difficulty, we suggest that you take a look at our comprehensive guide to free up storage on your iPhone. If using iOS 11 and higher, take a look at these handy tools to trim your iPhone and iPad Storage fat!
Obsessed with tech since the early arrival of A/UX on Apple, Sudz (SK) is responsible for the editorial direction of AppleToolBox. He is based out of Los Angeles, CA.
Sudz specializes in covering all things macOS, having reviewed dozens of OS X and macOS developments over the years.
In a former life, Sudz worked helping Fortune 100 companies with their technology and business transformation aspirations.
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Hi,
I got the message my storage is full, so I deleted few apps but on deleting some videos and photos, it refused to delete.
So I turned off my iPhone but I can’t start it up.
I got to the apple icon on the screen but it is just there for hours.
I tried the forced restart using the side keys but got the apple logo.
I tried connecting to my computer using iTunes but it’s not recognized by the computer.
I want to restart the phone without losing any data. Any help?
Hi Rasha,
Sorry to learn of your iPhone not booting up. Since you tried some of the troubleshooting steps already, we suggest you connect the iPhone to a charger using a wall outlet and let it charge overnight (or for at least 12-16 hours).
After that period, try powering it up normally. If it works, great! Try again to delete some apps and other storage hogs–visit Settings > General > Storage and scroll down the list of apps to see what’s taking up all that space. Once identified, delete the apps entirely (do not offload it.)
If after that charging period, you power up and again the device gets stuck, try a forced restart again. If that doesn’t work, use a computer and connect your device to iTunes. Then follow the steps to initiate Recovery Mode as instructed in this article: iOS: Everything about DFU and Recovery Mode
my storage is full and my iphone is 64 GB and 5 GB icloud and i delete 500 pictures and i still have 300 pictures. Why???????????????????????
Hi M Jezzini,
It’s possible that all those deleted photos are still on your device in the Photos app Recently Deleted album. To check, open the Photos app, choose the Albums tab, and scroll down to Recently Deleted. Tap to open Select the photos and choose Delete All.
That should clear up your photos from the device. We recommend restarting your iPhone after deleting these photos.
Clicking on “Empty” in front of “Recently Deleted” album doesn’t work. it shows 22GB storage but doesnt get deleted. Any option ?
This is ridiculous.
And it’s been an issue for YEARS.
Why doesn’t s*it work THE WAY IT’S SUPPOSED TO WORK?
Proving, yet again, that all these devices and manufacturers are full of it
A hint:
iPhone 5SE, IOS 12.3
I did the classic procedure
– turn off iCloud, delete all photos/videos, delete “recently deleted”, restart.
Checking in Settings / General /iPhone storage : the gray part of the “storage bar” has got a lot smaller (hurray!, but why ?), but the yellow part (Photos) was the same size (Eh?).
I was about to raise the issue here then, after a time, the yellow section was greatly reduced.
Message: It takes some time for the “real” delete to complete.
Hope this helps some other iPhoner’s.
I just moved 67GB of videos to my computer from my iPhone.
I do not have iCloud sharing enabled on my phone.
I force restarted the phone.
Nothing. No memory gained. Zero.
What now?
Hi Mike,
Check your Photos App Recently Deleted album and make sure those videos are not in a queue for deletion.
If the videos are still there, select them all and choose Delete All.
Then restart your iPhone by powering off, waiting a few minutes, and powering back on.
I got the same problem, nothing happens after deleting and restarting.
This is quite frustrating..
Seems like the phone needs a motherboard reset
I just noticed somehow I use to have 1200 photos showing up on photos section of my iPhone 6 11.4 version which I have not updated for months cause I only have 16 GB and the system is using up like 6 gb.. with only 200mb space left.
then I noticed today I haven’t touched the photo section except for restarting my phone for the first time in months and now I have 0 photos showing on photo app…so where has all my photo gone I didn’t even delete them and if the phone somehow deleted them but why don’t i have at least 3-4 gb of space free up???
could my iPhone data be corrupted or have a virus???
some of my icons turn into an icloud icon and can’t be open or run unless I reinstall the app but it can’t even do that cause it complains that I don’t have enough storage space….so really where did all my photos go??
I have them all back up on icloud except for most recent probably about 400-500 of the 1200 photos I have which now I’m trying to back up those so I could remove them and all the previous photos on my phone which I could probably then free up 3-4 GB but my problem is figuring out where all those 1200 pics went along with videos I forgot to mention???
my iPhone did shut down a few times too cause the battery was degrading it would turn off like with 10-20 percent range randomly in those range until I stick a charger on phone then it turns back up…. please help and advise what might have caused this to occur??
Thanks to someone if they get back to me ASAP…
Hi Lee,
Sorry to hear about your photos on your iPhone 6. They are likely still there–especially if you use iCloud Photo Library.
I think what might be going on is that your iOS is optimizing your iPhone to save storage. Consequently, it is now downloading smaller versions of each photo and storing the full resolutions photos on iCloud. That’s why you see the cloud icon.
So let’s check if that’s what’s going on:
1. Go to Settings > Photos
2. Take a look if the following things are on:
a. iCloud Photos toggled on b. Optimize Storage check marked
3. If both those things are selected, AND as you mention your iPhone’s internal storage is low, it’s likely iCloud and iOS optimizing that storage for you
Normally, you do not lose any photos in this process. Sometimes, it takes time to fully optimize your iPhone for storage savings which is why you may not see all your photos right now.
We suggest you connect your iPhone 6 to its charger, connect to your fastest WiFi network, and allow it to optimize everything. To help expedite, consider turning off Auto-Lock temporarily (Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock)
Wait for the process to finish.
If the issue persists after a few days, let us know
Liz
I keep deleting and deleting everything almost everyday and still my iPhone says My storage is full, I don’t get it because I deleted almost 10 Apps on my phone, a lot of videos and pictures and still it has a storage problem! It’s like I never deleted anything
Hi Sibongile,
Make sure you power off and restart after deleting apps and so forth. A restart clears out your device’s cache and recognizes when you remove something and updates your storage based on that.
If you still see the message storage is full, try offloading your app data, where possible, to iCloud.
To do this, open Settings > Apple ID Profile > iCloud and toggle on apps so they can use iCloud to store data.
Also check that automatic downloads are off in Settings > iTunes & App Store (for Music, Apps, Books&Audiobooks, and Updates)
Very helpful
This was very helpful for my Iphone 4s and cleared up all my storage
hi, using an iphone 5, 16GB, i rebooted after turning off the cloud photos, deleting loads of photos (which now only take up 606MB). My ‘used’ storage is unchanged at 12.13 GB meaning i only have 596MB available. When i add up all the individual compents that it shows, I only get to 7.5GB. The phone is still not registering the fact that i have cleaned it up….
Hi Dec,
First, take a look at your Recently Deleted Photos album–if photos are still there, select them and delete them again.
Check your storage again.
If it’s still not correct:
Make sure WiFi is turned on (Settings > WiFi) and then restart the phone normally by powering off, waiting 20 seconds, and powering back up. After restarting, see if space is now available.
If that doesn’t help, perform a forced restart by pressing both the Home and Power buttons and maintain this hold until the Apple Logo appears on-screen, then release.
Sam
Why does my 6S keep saying I have 2 Gb of emails after I deleted almost everything?! And no, I don’t want to delete the account.
Hi Todd,
Make sure you restart your device to clear any cache that may remain after deleting all that email. That may be the issue.
If the problem persists, let us know
Sam
Try: Go to settings, storage, delete recently deleted albums. This is what I had to do on my 5SE to free up space after deleting several hours of videos and heaps of photos.
HI Marina,
That’s a great tip! Thanks for sharing it with us and our readers. We’ll add it to the Reader Tips!
It used to be that Apple advertised “It just works” and it was true, as compared to Windows computers. Now they don’t advertise that and it would be false advertising. If Steve Jobs was alive, he would have fired many of the people running the company now. There are many things that have not worked for many years, and nobody fixes them. Some users find workarounds, but they don’t work for everybody. I guess we need another company to come along with something that does really work.
I followed the directions and it worked. Now down to 11.5 of 16. Thank you
Hi CLB,
Thanks for letting us know. Appreciate it! And glad you’re able to update your device.
SK
This solution did not work for me. I deleted over 5,600 photos, have forced restart 2times, regular restart and my phone still says I have these photos in iCloud back up and no space was freed.
Hello i need ur help,my iphone still has no space even though i deleted all those photos n recently deleted…i have tried every solutions that worked on others iphone but not on mine,(i’ve changed the date to two years ago but still no recently deleted on photos)..that’s the one of the best solution but it aint work so pls reply me ASAP