Optimize iPhone Storage explained: where your photos go, and how to get them back
If you’ve ever owned an iPhone in your life, chances are you’re 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 good job of improving the way iPhone storage is displayed and managed, but if you’re someone who likes to take photos and screenshots of anything and everything you see – and let’s be honest, who is? then not? recently? – then maximizing your iPhone’s camera roll remains a distinct possibility.
Fortunately, in 2017, Apple introduced a handy way to optimize photos (i.e. compress them to save storage space). Aptly called ‘Optimize Photos’ (or ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’, if your iPhone is running an older version of iOS) – this setting can be found by navigating to Settings > General > iPhone Storage, it promises to free up huge amounts of space on your iPhone’s hard drive.
But what optimizes Photos Actually mean for all your precious images? Where do these photos go once you press that shiny button? And more importantly: how do you get them back? Allow us to explain.
According to the note shown below the setting itself, Optimize Photos means that “full-resolution photos and videos will be safely stored in iCloud, and your iPhone will use smaller versions.” As a reminder, iCloud is Apple’s cloud-based platform for securing and transferring data between Apple devices. Once you activate Optimize Photos, you can still access the photos in their original, full-resolution format, but you’ll have to download them individually (from iCloud) whenever you want.
Of course, the big advantage of Optimize Photos is that it converts large-file photos to small-file photos, freeing up iPhone storage space. And depending on how many images you have saved in your camera roll, the savings can be huge. On my iPhone, for example, Optimize Photos would free up 28.88GB of storage – that’s enough to download another 5,000 songs on Spotify, or about 25 90-minute movies on Netflix.
As we said, the downside of Optimize Photos is that to get your photos back in full resolution, you have to download them from iCloud. At first glance, this is not a difficult process. The small-resolution versions in your camera roll are more like thumbnails: Clicking on an image automatically loads a full-quality version for you to view and share, before your iPhone later uploads that image back to the cloud. So far, so good. The major disadvantage is that this process requires an internet connection. And a fast one too.
If you’re at home, at the office, or out and about in a city with ample 4G (or 5G) coverage, it won’t take long for your iPhone to load a full-quality version of the image you want to view. to see. However, if you are traveling, on a flight, in an area with poor internet coverage, or even abroad (where internet can be expensive), your iPhone may have difficulty downloading the image (if it has this download at all). In other words, Optimize Photos locks your photos in a vault that can only be opened with a strong internet connection.
This won’t be a problem for most people, but it’s worth keeping in mind before you make good on the promise of more iPhone storage. It’s also worth noting that you’ll need enough backup iCloud storage for the large photo files converted by Optimize Photos. If not, you’ll see a message that’s just as annoying (if not more so) than that iPhone storage warning: “iCloud storage is full.”
To avoid that problem, here are five tips for freeing up iCloud storage. And if you’re interested in what that pesky “Other” category refers to in your iPhone’s storage settings, here’s what “Other” storage is and how to delete it.