A BAFFLED iPhone owner made a common mistake when trying to free up storage.
It took reaching out to savvy Apple fans to find out why it wasn’t working – and an instant fix that cleared dozens of gigabytes of storage.
As the sizes of photos, videos, and apps balloon, it’s easy enough to run out of iPhone storage.
One user tried deleting 25GB (gigabytes) worth of photos from their device.
But they were left confused over why they still appeared to be taking up space in Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
In a Reddit post, the iPhone owner asked: “I deleted every photo in my gallery, why is it still occupying 25GB?”
It took fellow Apple fans to reply and reveal that the user hadn’t also removed them from their Recently Deleted folder.
After making the discovery, the overjoyed iPhone owner replied: “OH THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH.”
It’s easy to forget that deleting photos only removes them from your main feed.
From there, they drop into your Recently Deleted folder and take up space.
And you won’t get the storage back until they expire automatically in that folder – or you delete them manually.
“Anything in your Recently Deleted album stays there for 30 days,” Apple explains.
“After 30 days, it’s permanently deleted and you can’t get it back.”
So if you need the space freed up immediately, you’ll need to head to the Recently Delete folder and scrub the photos from there too.
To find it, just open the official Apple Photos app, tap on Albums, and then scroll down to the very bottom.
You should see a Recently Deleted folder with a trashcan icon next to it.
Go in, tap select and choose the photos you want to get rid of, and then fully delete them from your device.
Note that the Recently Deleted folder is locked by default, so you’ll need to open it with Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode.
Another place where you might have some photos taking up space inadvertently is in the Hidden folder.
That’s because it’s possible to hide the Hidden folder, so you might forget it’s there.
You can go into Settings > Photos to unhide the Hidden folder.
And then you can find it right next to Recently Deleted in your albums.
And like the Recently Deleted folder, the Hidden folder is also locked by default.
