Photos app taking up a lot of space on iPhone 17 Pro Max

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Photos app taking up a lot of space on iPhone 17 Pro Max

I have deleted all of my photos from my iPhone, iPad and Mac, yet on my phone photos is still taking up 127gb of space. I've reconnected to the cloud and set to optimize storage settings. I've even signed onto iCloud to delete the photos from there and it says they will delete in 30 days. I'm now down to 10 days and really hoping that this space will be freed up after the ten days have passed. If it doesn't , any ideas please? `````

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iMac 24″, macOS 26.0

Posted on Oct 20, 2025 9:07 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 22, 2025 7:00 AM in response to TheEddZone

TheEddZone wrote: I have deleted all of my photos from my iPhone, iPad and Mac, yet on my phone photos is still taking up 127gb of space. I've reconnected to the cloud and set to optimize storage settings.

It seems odd that you've re-connected to iCloud. What do you see when you sign in to iCloud.com? What's at iCloud.com's Photos>Recently Deleted? How much iCloud storage do you see if you go to

Settings>[name]>iCloud? (I see 157 of 200GB, for instance.)

Ingo2711's suggestion of a forced restart is a good idea. This is different from a simple Power Off. I had to continue holding the button down past the "slide to power off" message, and then I released the button only after the Apple Logo appeared indicating a re-start. See if that forces a re-calculation.

Let us know…

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