This is one of the common questions most iPhone users are asking, how to clear iPhone phone storage by removing photos without deleting them photos from iCloud?
Yes, many users are experiencing low memory issues on iPhones, especially those taking many photos and videos. Whatever the iPhone storage is, whether 64GB, 128GB, or even 256GB, the storage gets full if you take photos and videos.
Here in this artcile, we check how to free up the iPhone storage using iCloud and store the photos and videos within iCloud to get more space.
Apple iCloud Storage to Free Up iPhone Memory
Apple is offering free 5GB iCloud storage to all Apple users. However, the free 5GB will only bring some benefits since it is very low and can’t be used as a backup storage for photos and videos. If you wish to keep the images and videos on your iPhone synced with iCloud storage, you must consider purchasing at least a 50GB storage plan.
Even though the 50GB storage is not enough, it can back up data to some extent, especially for those who own a 64GB iPhone.
How to Free Up iPhone Storage By Backing Up Photos and Videos to iCloud Storage
Once you have enough storage with your iCloud account, you can free up your iPhone’s photo and video storage. To do so, follow the below steps.
Step 1: Open the settings app on your iPhone.
Step 2: Scroll down and tap on the Photos option.
Step 3: From the Photos settings, select the option ”Optimise iPhone Storage”.
Done; your iPhone will automatically free up the phone storage and upload the photos and videos to iCloud Storage.
How to Remove Photos and Videos From iPhone and Store in iCloud
As done in the settings above, the iPhone will automatically upload all the photos and Videos from the phone to iCloud storage. Once you take a new video or photo, it will automatically be uploaded to the cloud and available on the phone. Since the option is set as Optimise iPhone Storage, the iPhone will automatically free up the photos and videos from the iPhone and store them in iCloud.
It is also noted that iCloud storage works as cloud storage for syncing purposes, not as backup storage. So therefore, the photos or video synced across the iCloud storage will be available to all Apple devices with the same Apple ID, and the file will be deleted from all the Apple devices when you delete it from any of the devices.
In short, if you delete any photo or Video from your iPhone, the exact copy of the photo/video will also be deleted from the iCloud storage. Therefore, manually deleting photos and videos won’t allow you to store your photos and videos within iCloud Storage.
Can I delete Photos and videos from my iPhone and store them only in iCloud storage?
Unfortunately, no. Apple doesn’t provide an option to manually delete the photo from the iPhone and save it only in iCloud storage. Instead, Apple uses an automatic, intelligent way of freeing the storage. Once the iPhone memory is full, Apple will delete the full-resolution photo from the mobile device and only save a low-resolution photo thumbnail. The original image will be stored within iCloud, and once the user opens it, it will download the full-resolution image to the device.
After viewing the image, the full-resolution image will be deleted from the device and uploaded to iCloud storage. Thus, all the actions will be taken automatically, and the iPhone will do the job.
In short, once your phone has enough storage, photos and videos will be stored on the phone and in the iCloud storage. Once your device runs out of storage, the iPhone will delete and replace the full-resolution image with a thumbnail from the phone and only store the full resolution within the iCloud storage.
