Storage (iCloud, iPhone) moving to lower storage device

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Level 1

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Storage (iCloud, iPhone) moving to lower storage device

Moving from a 256GB iPhone to a 128GB iPhone (I have no choice, due to my company provided phone options). After deleting 5K photos, I still have about 150GB on the current iPhone in photos.

My iCloud storage account is 2T and I have a new MacBook Air with 1T storage.

I have spent several weeks puzzling over this, reading the internet and calling Apple. The only solution I see is taking photos out of iCloud, putting them on the MacBook Air hard drive (without backing them up), and freeing up space in the Cloud, even though I have tons of space there, when photos in the iCloud syncs with the new iPhone, (which I would naturally want it to do), the phone would be out of storage. (I have over 40K photos).

However, when I make a folder in Photos on my hard drive, it isn't nicely organized like the Photos app- its just a mess, as everything appears to upload with today's date, and I am losing the metadata and historical date of the photo- so the organization is terrible.

Any advice or other workarounds that people can suggest, as I know I am not the first person to actually be stuck with a lower storage iPhone than the previous model I used...

Thanks!

iPhone 12 Pro

Posted on Sep 30, 2021 2:57 PM

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Answer 1

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léonie

Level 10

197,321 points

Sep 30, 2021 10:07 PM in response to MCTexasChica

With "optimise Storage" enabled the iCloud Photos Library can be reduced to 10% to 20% of the size used in iCloud. It will depend on the format of the image files and videos how much optimisation is possible. If you can afford to use 32GB on the iPhone for photos, you could sync an iCloud Photos Library of 320GB without any problems.

To create a copy of your iCloud Photos Library on your Mac, that has the same albums and structure as the Photos Library on your iPhone and in iCloud, get yourself an external drive with enough free storage to hold the complete library (if you do not have enough free storage on your MacBook Air). Or create a new library on your Macs system volume, if space permits.

Create a new, empty Photos Library on the external volume. To create the new library, quit Photos if it is running. Hold down the options key ⌥ while launching Photos again and select to create a new library, when the library chooser dialog appears.
Make the new library your System Photos Library (in Photos > Preferences > General) and then your iCloud Photos Library in (in Photos > Preferences > iCloud) . Do not enable "optimise Mac Storage in the Photos > Preferences > iCloud . You will want to download all photos in the full resolution, so you can make regular backups of your Photos Library.

Once the library on your Mac is syncing with iCloud Photos, the iCloud syncing will download an identical copy of what you have been seeing on your iPhone, with all albums, folders, named faces and places. It will take a few days for the photos and albums to download from iCloud.

Once you have saved your iCloud library on your Mac, copy it to an external volume to keep it safe. Then you can weed out the Mac library syncing with iCloud to free storage in iCloud and on your iPhone, if you really are worried about the photos taking up too much storage on your iPhone.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

197,321 points

Sep 30, 2021 8:10 PM in response to MCTexasChica

When you talked with Apple Support, have you been discussing the "Optimize iPhone Storage" feature?

My iCloud Photos Library has a size of 250GB, but I never had a problem to use iCloud Photos on my older iPhone 5s with only 64GB storage. I just had to enable "Optimize iPhone Storage" for the iCloud Photos Library. It should really not be a problem to. access your iCloud Photos Library with 150GB from an iPhone with128GB storage, as long as you enable "Optimise Storage" and the device is only downloading smaller, optimised versions of the photos you have not used in a long time.

But follow Ronasara's advice and keep a local copy of the full library on your Mac. You can easily keep this local library on an external volume with enough free storage, without using the Optimise Storage feature on the Mac. And then make regular backups of this library with Time Machine. Using an external volume for the Photos Library is described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 3

Ronasara

Level 6

15,043 points

Sep 30, 2021 5:14 PM in response to MCTexasChica

I have a couple of comments to share which may be useful. First, it is important to know that iCloud is NOT a storage function. It does have some storage features, but is mirrors your devices. It is an app/feature which is designed for sharing across your devices. Using it as a storage invites a situation when your data could be lost. For storage, you need to have an external device to store to. Then you can either use Time Machine to do the backup for you, or a similar app to do the backup. Or you can do it manually yourself. There are also web based backups available which you can subscribe to. Some can have costs associated with them. These days, external disks have become very cost effective. They are easy to install with provided USB cables and are very compact. Most do not require any external power. Keep in mind that eventually all hard drives will fail, so it is important to have your data backed up. That said, you might also want a second external drive just to store your photos on. Just some things to think about.

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Answer 4

MCTexasChica Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 30, 2021 8:22 PM in response to léonie

Thanks. Yes I definitely use the optimize iPhone storage feature in photos. With 40K+ photos, thanks don’t know if it would fit on my 256GB phone ;)

I would like to just copy the photo library and put it on the Mac hard drive but when I have tried to move some files over, I am losing the dates of the photos- the are uploading with todays date and not the date the photo was taken, like in the photos app. And the files just aren’t organized well like in the photo app (mainly the chronological order thing is wrong). I can accept if I need to take everything out of iCloud so that when it syncs with the new phone, it doesn’t kill it given iCloud has 2T of storage and the phone only 128GB for everything including photos.

But I have not seen a good tutorial on how to move photos from the iPhone (or iCloud) onto your Mac hard drive. (Technically since iCloud is on the Mac, you need to just move from the iCloud on the Mac to the Mac hard drive). And then the new iPhone will not have any photos on it, (and there will be none in iCloud either) but I can at least allow iCloud to sync again with that new phone.

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Answer 5

MCTexasChica Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 1, 2021 1:22 PM in response to léonie

Thank you. I created a new empty Photos library and made it the systems photo library and my iCloud photos are downloading to it. Once the download is complete, can I detach the new photo library from the iCloud, and delete all the photos in the iCloud, and all the photos in the original Systems photo library (if needed), and then reattach the original Systems photo library to iCloud (rather than the new library)? That way the photos would be in the new library on the Mac, and the iCloud would be syncing with the (old/empty) systems library on the Mac which would mean the new iPhone would have zero photos taking up space when I switch to it in a week, right?

Thank you! This is incredibly helpful as I did not find this info anywhere on the web or in calling support.

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Storage (iCloud, iPhone) moving to lower storage device

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