Photo Library: 600 Mb with 0 photos and 0 videos?

[VKondakoff]

Hello!

I'm running out of available iCloud space. To save some space I downloaded my current photos and deleted them (including the Recently Deleted Album).

Now I see this on all of my devices:

What is wrong? Can you recommend a way to bring back these 585.8 megs?

Thank you!

 

[DiabBarca]

Someone was also complaining about a 600mb video he deleted but still takes the space from his iCloud storage....
Probably it's a bug that needs to be squashed before the Photos.app public beta release....

 

[swordfish5736]

Were you using iCloud Photo Library?

It says if you want to stop using it you will have 30 days to download photos and videos. If you go to iCloud.com and try to view photos are any there?

 

[VKondakoff]

Yes, I am using iCloud Photo Library.
iCloud.com shows a usage of 600 megs of photos:

But the Photos/Videos pane is empty:

Turning the iCloud Photo on/off and signing out and back in to th iCloud account does not help.

----------

Was trying to delete these unknown photos by turning the iCloud off and connecting iPhone to Mac iTunes, but no photos were shown...

 

[jdag]

I was the one that posted about having 635mb "orphaned". My situation is different than yours in that the space is not showing as used on iCloud but it is showing as being used on both my iPhone and iPad. Basically, at 1 time the video was synced across my devices. It originated on the iPad, was sent to iCloud, and back down to the iPhone. I since deleted it, but the space is still being consumed on both devices (although freed up on iCloud).

Here was my original post. Maybe something I've tried will help you:

I have a situation with a video that I've deleted still taking up storage space on both my iPhone and iPad. The video is 635mb.

I did enable iCloud Photo Library (beta) about a month ago. Subsequently, I turned it off as I was noticing a large amount of storage being used on both devices (and quite honestly, I didn't see much benefit of the iCloud Photo Library as I rarely use my iPhone/iPad cameras).

However, in the time I had iCloud Photo Library active, I had taken and deleted a few videos, including this one 635mb video in question.

Now, even though I have erased every photo and every video from my iPhone, iPad, and even via the iCloud.com Photos app, my iPhone and iPad still report using 635mb. I have been sure to empty the recently deleted items. If you look at my iPhone and iPad Photos app, everything is completely empty. Yet under Settings -> General -> Usage -> Manage Storage (for device), both my iPhone and iPad report 635mb used.

I've tried turning the iCloud Photo Library option on and off several times. I have also gone into Settings -> General -> Usage -> Manage Storage (for iCloud) and disabled, re-enabled, and re-disabled. iCloud Photo Library.

Strangely, when I had activated the iCloud Photo Library yesterday, that "deleted" video actually reappeared in my recently deleted items folder. I emptied it. But again, cannot recover the used space (and even turning off/on iCloud Photo Library doesn't cause it to re-appear again).

Any ideas to reclaim that space? I only have a 16gb iPhone, so 635mb is pretty significant. I have not yet tried erasing the device and restoring from backup, but that might be an option.

 

[VKondakoff]

Hey, just called the Apple support and there are _really_ interesting news: the orfan storage in my case are my old deleted photos and videos which will use the iCloud storage for 30 days before they will be automatically purged... And there is no way to force delete them. Nonsense!

I created new post here: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=20754509 with issue description.

Can anybody help to send full-blown bug report to Apple?

Thank you!

 

[Fzang]

Does this lock the space, or is it overwrite-able, should you require those 600 MB as the only available space on your device?

 

[jdag]

Seems to me that there is (sometimes) a disconnect that occurs between devices and/or iCloud when photos or videos are deleted. The effect is that even though not visible in the operating system, the photo/video is actually still present.

 

[swordfish5736]

Hey, just called the Apple support and there are _really_ interesting news: the orfan storage in my case are my old deleted photos and videos which will use the iCloud storage for 30 days before they will be automatically purged... And there is no way to force delete them. Nonsense!

I created new post here: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=20754509 with issue description.

Can anybody help to send full-blown bug report to Apple?

Thank you!

That's what I posted above.

If you think it's a bug go to bugreporter.apple.com and file one. You don't need a developer account.

They should add an additional way to purge the media, but it makes perfect sense the way it functions. It could be one of the details they are still working out as iCloud Photo Library is in beta.

It looks like your backups are almost 4gb. Is that for one device? If so you could probably reduce the size a decent amount by deleting some old un-needed conversations from messages.

Does this lock the space, or is it overwrite-able, should you require those 600 MB as the only available space on your device?

They aren't being used on his device just his iCloud storage

 

[sualpine]

Hey, just called the Apple support and there are _really_ interesting news: the orfan storage in my case are my old deleted photos and videos which will use the iCloud storage for 30 days before they will be automatically purged... And there is no way to force delete them. Nonsense!

I created new post here: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=20754509 with issue description.

Can anybody help to send full-blown bug report to Apple?

Thank you!

It is not nonsense. You want someone to be able to delete your life's worth of photos and you have no recourse to get them back? A forced 30 days makes sense.

 

[Max(IT)]

It is not nonsense. You want someone to be able to delete your life's worth of photos and you have no recourse to get them back? A forced 30 days makes sense.

I'm glad about thatn nonsense....

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I've found that if you have iCloud Photo Library turned on, even if you delete items, they still take up room. Even if you "permanently delete" them from iCloud.

This is a problem if you record a video that takes up all available space. Even if you delete it, then even if you permanently delete it from your "Recently Deleted" album, even if you plug in to your computer, copy it over, and tell iPhoto to delete it from the phone, it still takes up room.

I've found the only way to get it to release the space is to turn iCloud Photo Library off, then back on.

 

[verdi1987]

I recently started seeing this issue with orphaned photos and videos consuming iCloud storage but appearing nowhere in Photos for iOS or OS X.

In an effort to reclaim the space, I tried multiple times to "reset" iCloud Photo Library. I deleted (and then permanently deleted) all my photos from iCloud Photo Library on all devices and then disabled iCloud Photo Library. When I re-enabled iCloud Photo Library, iCloud storage showed 0 photos and 0 videos (because I deleted everything) but about 250MB was being used by Photos.

I repeated this disabling/re-enabling several times to no avail.

I noticed that when I re-enabled iCloud Photo Library on OS X, Photos.app status showed some file(s) taking a while to download.

I browsed the "Photos Library.photoslibrary" bundle in Finder and discovered 2 videos and 1 photo that had been orphaned, and these files added up to the used iCloud storage. I deleted the files via Terminal; however, the deletions did not sync back to iCloud, so I was unable to reclaim the storage.

I will wait about 30 days to see if those orphans are cleared, but Apple needs to provide a way to reset iCloud Photo Library.

 

[Sukach]

I don't know if this will fix your problem, but it fixed a problem on both my wife and I's phones (5s) a couple months ago. We've long had the problem where iTunes and our phones said we had gigs of photos despite not having much in our libraries.

Turns out, there is a glitch with the deletion of photos. First, delete out all photos in the Recently Deleted album. Then, change the date on your phone to 6/9/12 months ago. Then, go back to the Recently Deleted album. If there are more photos, go ahead and delete them. Then, change your date back to the correct setting.

This reclaims GIGS of space of both our phones. The long awaited solution to a problem that had plagued us for a long time. It almost had me thinking about going with the 128GB next time (we both have 64GB), but I didn't want to do that because of a software glitch.

 

[freemannnn]

same here. 2.9gb space lost with no photos or video in icloud.
i talked with apple support and they told me they reclaim my space and i have to wait a little to see it in iphone or icloud.