Hello everyone,
I’m facing a perplexing storage issue with my iPhone 15 Pro, which I’ve also observed on previous iPhone models, dating back to the iPhone 8. At present, I have around 5,500 photos on my device. Recently, I’ve undertaken significant measures to clean up my photo library by deleting duplicates and unnecessary images, and I’ve made sure to completely empty the Recently Deleted folder. I even transferred all my remaining photos to my computer, where their actual uncompressed size is only about 45 GB.
However, there is a baffling discrepancy when I check the storage settings. In Settings > General > iPhone Storage, the Photos app is reported to be using 160 GB. This indicates a staggering surplus of over 110 GB of “ghost” photo data that I am unable to locate or delete. This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced such an issue.
In fact, the only two so-called “solutions” that have worked for me in the past involve either completely erasing the iPhone and setting it up as new (even restoring from backups returns the bloat) or purchasing a new iPhone. Both solutions are not only time-consuming but also unacceptable for a high-end device. My theory is that I often collaborate with shared albums from other iOS users. I suspect that these images are getting cached locally but are not visible in the Photos app, making them impossible to delete.
Alternatively, could iOS be storing hidden caches, previews, or RAW duplicates that could contribute to this excessive storage use? Has anyone else encountered this issue? If so, do you have any reliable solutions?
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