Where’s my missing iphone storage?
QI have a 32GB iphone 7. I’ve taken loads of photos and videos and haven’t been very good at deleting the rubbish or unwanted ones. Recently, my phone ran out of space so I spent over an hour going through the photo roll deleting stills and videos. I was relieved when I finished, but dismayed to find that my iphone still said there wasn’t enough storage for new photos! I have no idea what’s going on. Do I have to wipe the phone and start over? Kate Weston
ANo, you don’t need to wipe your iphone. What’s happened here is that the deleted photos have been placed automatically into a folder called Recently Deleted. Photos in this folder won’t actually be deleted until 30 days have elapsed. The idea is a bit like the Recycle Bin in Windows, acting as a safety net that allows you to recover photos that you might’ve deleted accidentally.
The Recently Deleted folder works well generally, as a constant stream of ‘deleted’ photos will reach the 30-day expiry point, at which stage they’re actually deleted from the device to free up storage. But, as you deleted a load of photos at once, they’ll all sit there for the next month, occupying the space you need.
The solution is to enter the Recently Deleted folder and force the deletions manually. From your iphone’s home screen, launch the Photos app and then, at the bottom right, tap Albums. Swipe up to find Recently Deleted, then tap to enter. Next, tap Select. From here you can either tap Delete All or tap to select specific photos or videos followed by Delete, then confirm by tapping ‘Delete X Photos’ (see screenshot).