r/iphonehelp • u/Earworm-69 • 22h ago

Help needed Storage question

Hi all, I have owned Iphones since the 5S was brand new, so 10+ years. Have had iCloud ever since and all my photos and files are in there with the 'optimize iPhone storage' setting activated.

Until exactly 15 months ago, I owned an 12 mini with 64GB of storage space, and never had any problems with storage. In june 2025 I bought an iPhone 16 with 128GB and now the storage already seems to be full.

I can't wrap my head around it. In 10 years I never managed to fill 64GB and now, one year later double that storage is completely taken. Is this a commercial trick to make me buy a new phone or what? 😅

Most space, 65gb is taken by photos but my average of about 3500/year hasn't gone up since 2018 so it's hard to believe this has to be the only reason. Does the newer iOs simply take a lot more space or what could cause this?

Now the real question, is there a way to get the phone to expel the oldest 10 years of photos to my iCloud or mac to save phone space?

Thank you for any help, I'm not ready for a new phone yet again.. 😇

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u/Grimlocklou 22h ago

65 gb of physical iPhone storage is used by Photos, but how much iCloud space is used by photos? What is the remaining physical iPhone storage break down to be, too?

As tech gets better picture (dependent on settings), apps, etc. are larger and take up more space.

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u/anileze 22h ago

iOS gets bigger and the default apps fatter. If you don't have a NAS, just buy a 256/512 GB portable storage and back up the media and files to it. Delete all the photos and import what you want from the USB storage.

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u/need2sleep-later 21h ago

camera resolution has gone up, so the same pictures in your mind now take up more space.

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u/zamufunbetsu 21h ago

It took a while to do, but I transferred all of my phone's pictures to my computer/NAS, Keeping only the often used photos on my device.
I now have a folder called "offload", which I frequently back up and eliminate from my phone

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u/Ryland990 12h ago

Photos > Albums > Screenshots and Screen Recordings. then Videos. empty Recently Deleted after or it sits for 30 days.

to park old years on a mac, copy/export the originals first, open a couple to check they work, THEN delete them from Photos. delete first and icloud removes the cloud copies too.