"Storage Full" — But Which Storage? Your Phone Versus the Cloud

The short answer

A "storage full" message tends to make people start deleting photos or buying more space straight away. Before you do either, find out which storage is actually short. The space on your phone and the space in your cloud account are two different things. Which one is full decides where you look and what you do about it.

Two separate containers

Device storage is the capacity built into the phone. Cloud storage is space on an online service, and its size depends on your plan. Apple, for one, describes iCloud storage and device storage as separate things.

That means buying more cloud storage does not add space to the phone itself. Equally, deleting files from the phone does not necessarily solve a shortage in the cloud.

Read the warning, then the breakdown

Start by reading the warning carefully to see which storage it refers to. Then look at the usage breakdown. On iPhone the screens are as follows (names may vary by iOS version and language).

Apple notes that if iCloud stays full, iCloud features may stop keeping your content up to date until you free space or add more.

With Google One, Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos share one pool of storage. You can see usage per service from options such as Manage storage in each app. Google explains that going over the limit affects each service; for example, Gmail can no longer send or receive email.

What to do depends on what is full

If the phone is short of space, start with things you can download again later. iPhone Storage shows recommendations for freeing space. Cache (temporary data kept to make things load faster) may not be included in the figures shown.

If the cloud is short, look at that service's breakdown to see what is taking the room. Old device backups or large files you had forgotten about sometimes turn up.

For example, a full phone sends you to iPhone Storage to look at unused apps and videos, while a full iCloud account sends you to the iCloud screen to look at backups and photos. The place you check is different.

Separate "smaller copies" from "delete"

If you sync photos across devices, deleting one on a single device may delete it everywhere. Apple explains that with iCloud Photos, a deleted photo is removed from every device signed in to the same account.

A setting that is easy to confuse with deletion is one that keeps smaller copies on the device. On iPhone, Optimize Storage keeps space-saving versions on the phone while the full-resolution originals stay in iCloud. That is not the same as deleting the photos.

Copy the originals you need to somewhere else, such as a computer, and confirm they open before you tidy up. That makes an irreversible mistake less likely.