Whip out your iPhone and take a picture, simple. So simple in fact that many of us are accumulating a lot of photos on our smartphones. All these pictures have to be stored somewhere. Are they stored on the phone, in the cloud (meaning the Internet), in Photo Stream? This is where the confusion comes into play. As Apple changes the way they do business this is a constantly evolving topic so I will do my best to describe the current Apple landscape as it is today.
iPhone and iPad Device Storage
The first type of storage to learn about is the storage on the device itself. When you purchased your iPhone or iPad you were most likely give two or three choices in size. When I talk of size here I am not talking about the physical size of the phone but instead the size of the internal storage. Inside every iPhone and iPad is the capacity to store content such as pictures, music, videos, movies, books, apps, documents, etc. This is the internal storage of the device itself which comes as 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and now 128GB. To try and put this into perspective the old square plastic floppy disks held 1.44MB and 1024MB equals 1GB. (1024MB = 1GB and 1024GB = 1TB). The old floppy disk could not even hold one iPhone photo (iPhone photos average about 2.3MB). So you see we have come a long way in 20 years.
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| Here is a good use for the old floppy disk, planters! |
But enough tech talk. When you purchase your next iPhone or iPad keep in mind that you will be offered two or three sizes so think ahead if you will need only the basic model or if you need to spend extra to get a larger model. If you are a basic user and only have a few hundred photos on the phone at any one time then the smaller storage size will be fine. But if you are the type of person that likes to keep thousands of pictures or music or other content on your phone or tablet then pay extra to get an iPhone or iPad with a larger capacity.
Current retail prices for the iPhone 6s:
How much storage is right for you? Here is how Apple puts it:
"iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus come in three storage sizes: 16GB, 64GB, and 128GB. The term "GB" stands for gigabytes. The more gigabytes you have, the more content you can store on your iPhone, such as apps, games, photos, HD videos, music, and movies. For example, if you have a large music or photo library or lots of apps, it's a good idea to consider an iPhone with a larger storage capacity. If you rarely download apps or you don't take many photos or videos, an iPhone with a smaller capacity may be better for you. When deciding which size to choose, be sure to consider how your storage needs may change over time." I rarely see anything other that pictures fill up iPhones so you are mostly concerned with how many photos you plan to leave on your smartphone.
The second kind of storage is
iCloud storage. That is the space you are renting from
Apple on their servers on the Internet to store backups of your stuff.
Apple wants you to save everything (pictures, documents, etc.) you do on your
iPhone,
iPad and even on your
Mac computer on their servers.
iCloud storage is shared between all your
Apple devices including your laptop and/or desktop computer. The benefit to you is that a copy of all your stuff is safely stored on the Internet for sharing between devices or in case disaster strikes. A benefit to
Apple is they get to charge you $ for all this storage space after you go over your free 5GB of
iCloud storage. See
iCloud storage and backup overview.
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| Settings/General/Storage & iCloud Usage |
Check your Device and iCloud Storage Usage
To check the storage capacity of your current iPhone or iPad and see how much storage you're using on your device go to Settings/General/Storage & iCloud Usage/Manage Storage. The first Manage Storage shows you your device storage usage. If you don't like what you see you can touch an item and depending on what it is either remove some of the content or remove the entire app.
The second Manage Storage shows you your iCloud storage usage. If you don't like what you see you can start deleting backup data or you could simply buy more iCloud storage from Apple. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and touch "Change Storage Plan" if you want to buy more iCloud storage space. You get 5GB of iCloud storage for free. After that here is what Apple is currently charging:
50GB is $12/year
200GB is $36/year
1TB is $120/year
Photo Stream
Photo Stream simply syncs the last 1000 photos
(videos are never in Photo Stream) that you take with your
iPhone or
iPad with all your devices. If you take a photo with your
iPhone it will automatically show up on your
iPad and your computer. That is the promise but since this happens magically, wirelessly through the air it does not always work in reality. Some photos have been known to drop off the
Photo Stream for no particular reason. So just think of
Photo Stream as a temporary revolving 1000 most recent photos with the oldest ones dropping off as new ones are taken. But don't rely on it 100% as a way to get photos to your computer. See
My Photo Stream FAQ.
Removing photos and videos from iPhone and iPad and transfer them on your computer
If your iPhone or iPad is full and you need to remove photos and videos to free up space then connect it to your computer with the cable that came with it. Pull the cable from the wall charger part and plug it into the side or back of your computer.
If you use a Mac:
- Open Photos or iPhoto whichever you are using (it may open by itself).
- The Import window will open. Click Import in the upper right.
- If any of the photos or videos on your device are already on your computer a message will pop up. Check the box "Apply to all duplicates" and click Don't Import.
- At the end you will be asked if you want to leave the photos and videos on the device or delete them. Delete them. You can always put select photo folders back on your device using iTunes. See Sync photos from your computer to your iOS device using iTunes.
If you use Windows:
- Open Picasa (it may open by itself or you maybe ask to "Import photos using Picasa?")
- The Import window will open (you may need to click Import upper left).
- Bottom left select where the photos and videos will go (usually My Pictures), what name you want for the folder (today's date or type a name), and select "delete copied photos after import" to remove them from the iPhone.
- Click Import bottom right. Confirm that photos and videos will be removed after import.
- If you want to put select photo folders back on to your device use iTunes. See Sync photos from your computer to your iOS device using iTunes.
Now your iPhone or iPad will have enough free space to take more photos and videos or to install the latest update.
