I was talking to a buddy the other day and I told him I would show him some tips on how to stop having this problem. He replied "Apple 101." I laughed because he knows I'm a 'tech guy' and this kind of stuff he just wants to know what the answer is to the problem. I promised I would oblige him.
First off, your iPhone is most likely storing hundreds, if not thousands of pictures. If you're like my buddy and the phone dies and there was never a backup made, you're basically S.O.L. But if you want to put in preventative measures that will ensure you never lose a photo from data loss again, then I recommend you do the following...and the cost is negligible if your photos are priceless to you.
Go to your iPhone
Settings
Click your name (Apple ID, iCloud, iTunes, etc)
iCloud
Storage
Change Storage Plan
Select 50GB for $0.99 a month.
Confirm the changes.
Then go back to Settings
Photos & Camera
iCloud Photo Library > Toggle ON
Check Optimize iPhone Storage
Upload My Photo Stream > Toggle OFF
iCloud Photo Sharing > Toggle ON
What did you just do?
Well, you bought iCloud storage from Apple. Basically, each new photo you take will eventually be uploaded to the cloud. This happens usually when you get home and are connected to WiFi. It knows to do this automatically for you.
Why is this better?
The phone itself will not be used as a photo storage device anymore. You will be able to still view, share, and manage your photos as normal. Deleting a photo is essentially the same thing because now you're going to be deleting it from the cloud instead of your phone. But having 50GB of cloud space shouldn't run out of space too soon...unless you have grandchildren, am I right?
Additionally, if you have a Mac, you can save physical copies of the photos on there. You don't need iTunes. Just open Photos on your Mac
Go to Preferences
iCloud
iCloud Photo Libary > Check this box
Download Originals to this Mac
My Photo Stream > turn this off
iCloud Photo Sharing > Check this box
What did you just do here?
If you're a person who likes that peace of mind by having the physical copies of the photo saved somewhere, then the best place to do that is on your Mac, where there shouldn't be space issues because Macs nowadays have more space than an iPhone.
Anything else?
Nope, not really. You will see a bill for $0.99 a month, so don't be alarmed that your kid or you inadvertently bought some recurring subscription you didn't know about. If you have any questions or additional information please leave me a comment below. Endorsing this article shows others this is good content. Thanks for reading!
Have a question about something in this article? You can receive help directly from the article author. Sign up for a free trial to get started.
Comments (5)
Commented:
This makes it sound like the phone is only temporary storage until the photo is in iCloud. Does this mean anytime I'm opening my photos app that I'll be using data? I could see that getting expensive if I'm not on Wi-Fi.
Author
Commented:Should you be concerned? This depends on your situation. For example, I've used almost 400mb of cellular data with Photos this month. I take a photo or two about every day. I also use High Dynamic Range on my camera, but I don't keep the Normal Photo as well. This saves space because I don't need a duplicate of a less quality photo. So, if you don't use HDR photos and only use Normal, then this is a good way to cut down on data usage when viewing photos that are already in the cloud. You might even say using Google Photos free version is a way to go if you are not keen on HDR photos. In my case though, the usage of data is negligible even with HDR photos enabled, compared to other apps I'm using, for example, Facebook has used 706mb, Chrome has used 1.2gb, Mail 514mb, and Instagram 948mb. This is month to date and my cycle started on March 7th. I recently switched to unlimited data with my carrier so I don't have to micromanage my family's data plan anymore. I'm very glad I did this.
If you're concerned with exceeding cellular data usage you have some options. I believe all carriers now offer unlimited data. See your carrier for more details. Or if unlimited data is not an option with your carrier, you can manage your data usage on the iPhone by disabling use of cellular data when using Photos.
Go to Settings
Cellular
Photos > Toggle OFF
Its not an ideal solution, but if avoiding the headache of an additional charge of going over your data plan through your carrier is something to be worried about, then micromanaging cellular data is possible on the iPhone for most apps.
Author
Commented:Commented:
Even selecting optimized photo roll will use space on your phone. It's just that the phone will modify the size of the cache according to how much space there is available on your device. e.g. on my Android, Google Photos has a 500mb cache.
Commented:
Iphone. Whatsapp backup. Google. Free and unlimited media storage.
By installing Google Photos on your iphone, you will be able to backup all your iphones media, including your Whatsapp Folder/Album (Photos, Videos, Voicenotes, GIF's).
You wont need to buy extra storage for Google Drive, becuase Google Photos has an option for unlimited storage, so this does count against your default Google Drive space.
If you choose to backup your Whatsapp media (Photos, Videos, Voicenotes, GIF's) this way, you can still backup your chat database to icloud, in your whatsapp settings, you can choose to backup chats without videos, so you wont use up your up your icloud storage space, by duplicating videos already backed up with Google Photos.
Google Photos also has an assitant to help you remove media on your device that has already been backed up, this is optional, but helpfull if you need to recover storage space on your device. You will need a data connection or wifi access to access your media files, or just choose for offline access for selected media files.