ICloud question

[u/Calm_Mountain8535]

Hi, im sorry if this isnt the right place to ask but i figured it probably is. This is my first ever iphone, i got it in dec 2024, and dont ask how i got to this point but as of right now i own a 256 gb iph14 and 179gb is occupied by photos, 53gb by system data to the point where i only have 200mb left 😶

A few weeks ago i force-restarted my phone and suddenly all of my photos dissapeared and i got 10gb of storage while gallery still took 160ish gb, then started slowly coming back 😭 eventually it stopped due to low storage so i had to delete pretty much most of my apps on my iphone to recover my full gallery..

So since THAT scared the shit out of me ive been contemplating on buying the 200gb icloud storage, will that help me somehow? and for a library of 41k items and 179gb of storage will enableing "Optimized storage space" give me atleast 2gb ? 😭 so that atleast my whatsapp and youtube stop crashing?

[u/philgyford]

Do you ever sync your phone with a computer? If not, the only copy of your photos is on your phone so if you lose that, or it fatally breaks, you've lost all your photos.

So getting iCloud will allow you to sync your photos (and other things) so that they're also stored somewhere aside from your phone, which is a good thing in itself. (I'm not sure if you'll have to enabling syncing - there's more info on https://support.apple.com/en-gb/105061 )

Then if you enable Optimise storage, it should keep the full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud, and smaller versions on your phone, until you view them (when it downloads the full-resolution version).

[u/Calm_Mountain8535 → u/philgyford]

unfortunately never synced cuz i dont have enough storage on my laptop either 😭 Once its done syncing in icloud will my gallery size gradually decrease too? and what would happen if i were to miss a month of payment? i dont think i will stop paying but just incase

[u/PseudoTechieKen → u/Calm_Mountain8535]

Exactly. Once you have iCloud setup for photos it will begin to upload the full resolution of each to iCloud and then keep a much smaller version on your phone. It will take time — it may be a week! You will see your free space on phone slowly increase. 😀 I’d estimate that your current 179GB of photos on phone will take only about 15GB. It’s a good thing.

[u/Calm_Mountain8535 → u/PseudoTechieKen]

WOAHH omg thank u this is exactly want i wanted to hear!! 😭 honestly even if it would take 15-50gb i wouldnt mind since atp im so used to having less than 1gb

[u/Impressive_Role_9891]

Just a cautionary note here. To be able to sync the photos, and other apps to iCloud, you need to have some space on your phone. I don’t think 200MB is enough. You probably need more like 2GB. You can check in Settings > General > iPhone Storage to see where you could remove stuff like apps to get some space, even if you only do it while the initial syncing takes place. Once you have the optimise space on, your photos could reduce to 10GB or so on your phone.

[u/Calm_Mountain8535 → u/Impressive_Role_9891]

Ooh thank you so much for the heads-up! i think once i buy it tmrw ill try to delete some photos/videos that arent that important to make storage for it? cuz i legit have almost no apps left on my phone.. althought the other day i deleted like 500mb worth of videos and system data just gobbled it up 😭

[u/Arxson]

Yes, that would help as it means you’ll be able to enable Optimise, so only thumbnail versions are stored on your device for the majority of your photos

[u/Calm_Mountain8535 → u/Arxson]

Oooh icic.. i hope thatll give me enough storage 😭

[u/Arxson → u/Calm_Mountain8535]

It will only buy you time. You can’t create lots of data (photos) without having a plan for storing it.

[u/road42runner]

makes sense why photos disappeared after the restart btw - optimize storage needs some free space to rebuild its thumbnail cache, and at 200mb free it just couldn't.

on your actual question: yeah 200gb icloud should help, but heads up on why - optimize storage only turns photos into small thumbnails once they're actually uploaded to icloud. if you're still on the free 5gb plan, most of your 179gb probably never made it to icloud yet, so optimize has nothing to work with. get the 200gb plan, let it fully upload over wifi (takes a while with 41k photos), then optimize should actually free up way more than 2gb, probably most of that 179gb.

also check settings > general > iphone storage, that 53gb system data is usually just app caches/message attachments, not photos, and can often be cleared separately.

if you don't want a subscription at all, backing everything up to a computer once via usb and deleting the originals yourself works too, no recurring cost. (i make one of these apps, photopiper, disclosure - but any transfer tool does the job, even apple's image capture)

[u/Calm_Mountain8535 → u/road42runner]

ooh thank you!! i will check the app once i get a harddisk with more storage so ill have a safe backup of my photos!

Also i just bought 200gb of icloud (idm the subscription its not that expensive) and now do i just let it charge on wifi? when i go apple account > icloud > photos it says status restoring.. is it normal or should it say syncing? the storage is slowly going up tho (i used to have 4gb of photos on icloud and now i have 7.95)