Answers...

to commonly asked questions.

It says I don't have enough space on my phone

Why am I out of space on my phone? I bought more iCloud space and I still can’t take any pictures.

I hear this EVERY SINGLE DAY. Let’s try to clear this up. Buying more iCloud storage has absolutely nothing to do with being able to store more locally on your phone. The only reason you may want to buy more iCloud storage is if you’d like more space for storing documents created in Pages, Keynote, Numbers or Text Edit, more calendar events, more contacts, or a longer period of TEMPORARY storage of pictures via iCloud’s photo stream service. As of 8/2014, iCloud does not, repeat does not backup your entire iPhoto library. It only transfers pictures you’ve taken on your iOS device to iPhoto via Apple’s servers. At present, Apple does not hold on to your pictures permanently. In the near future it is likely that this will change but not right now.

You are out of storage on your device because you, like everyone else, haven’t taken the pictures you’ve taken on the device, off.

Almost no one removes the pictures off their iOS devices. Oh, you think you do but you are wrong. Here’s why.

A: You never plug your phone up to iTunes
B: You plug it up and sync the pictures over but you don’t delete them.
C: You plug it up and sync the pictures over and you hit the delete button but you never go back the phone in the left hand column of iPhoto and actually remove everything.

Confused? Ok. Here’s how to clean all the pictures you’ve taken off your phone to free up space...

Screen Shot 2014-10-08 at 11.38.34 PM

Now choose to Delete the imported pictures.
Screen Shot 2014-10-08 at 11.40.27 PM

Notice that “Last Import” is now highlighted in the left column. This is what throws everyone off the trail. You need to get back to the phone so you can finish the job.
Screen Shot 2014-10-08 at 11.40.47 PM

Select the phone in the left column and now look! The secret button appears.
Screen Shot 2014-10-08 at 11.41.01 PM

Yes.
Screen Shot 2014-10-08 at 11.41.43 PM

You’ve now taken all the pictures from the camera roll off your phone. But wait, there’s more.

So why are there still pictures on your phone? Two possible reasons.

1. You are using iCloud’s photo streaming to save pictures to iPhoto over the internet wirelessly and iCloud’s photos are still on your phone. (usually around 1000 most recents)
2. You used iTunes to sync some older pictures from your iPhoto library over to the phone so you could have those Thanksgiving pictures from 2006 on your phone to show Grandma when you see her this summer.

Either way, that’s fine. The main thing is you’ve now cleaned up the camera roll. Now you probably have enough space to update your phone.

Lastly, remember my mantra: iPhoto is in charge of taking pictures off the phone’s camera roll. iTunes is in charge of syncing pictures back on to the phone to carry around and enjoy.

This image is a theme.plist hack