I mean, if and when I need to turn them back on I will, but right now I have the space on my phone to actually store things on it again. I do pay for iCloud because I literally had to to use my previous phone without losing years worth of photos etc— my main issue is actually the time & data cost it takes to constantly re-download things when I need them, especially since I am often out of the house.
The offloading apps setting is NOT in storage settings, as I have already said (twice!!!). For some reason, it's not coming up when I try to search settings, so I have no clue where it is actually kept (it did used to be in storage in iOS 17, from memory, but it appears to have moved with iOS 26). There were definitely more settings applied than just photos (which for anyone else struggling who stumbles across this thread, given these settings are all spread out when you're trying to turn them back off given they're all just initially given as 'suggestions' to turn on and thus don't live in storage, is found by going to settings -> apps -> photos). The main one I'm concerned about right now is the fact that all of my ebooks & pdfs stored in books also automatically offload, as I fairly frequently access them when not at home. Do I literally have to completely stop them being backed up to iCloud to have them stay on my phone permanently by default, because that seems very badly designed if so
