I have a Family Share iCloud plan - the 200GB level.
I have a family of 4 and my son and my wife have taken up 125GB of that storage and we’re basically maxed out. So they both need to go into their apps - mostly Photos and Messages it appears after initial reviews - and remove useless content.
My question is are there any apps out there that could help with this process of bulk removal of useless photos/screenshots/etc?
I know Photos has a feature that categorizes different images accordingly - like Screenshots - which is a big culprit for my wife - but was wondering if anyone knows of any other apps worth considering that may help with the process of editing/removing useless images in bulk and make the process a little less time consuming?
And no, I don’t want to upgrade to the 2TB iCloud plan.
I use Gemini photos for this as well. I meant to reply but I got sidetracked trying to figure out if the subscriptions share across family plans or not. If not, you could probably just have them do the free trial or pay for the monthly subscription to do a one-time slim down.
I’ve prevented going up to 2TB 4-5 times now; you can do it!
Maybe you have some space on a hard disk, so you could move some of the stuff that is not needed in the iCloud, onto that disk?
Perhaps all pictures older than…?
Normally the photos app should not contain real duplicates, as long as they were not created on purpose, and I personally would not trust into a app, who should decide which of my photos (who are not real duplicates) are worth to keep, or not!
The app doesn’t get to decide what you delete. Its main purpose is to detect similar images and give the user an easy way to select the ones to retain. And even if something was accidentally deleted, the photos are still recoverable for a month.
Moving Photos off iCloud is undesirable, in my humble opinion. Firstly, the library becomes fragmented and you need to do more management. The more complicated the setup is, the easier it gets to delete or forget to backup something. Secondly, the more pictures Apple Photos has, the more it can shine when it comes to creating memories or highlighting interesting shots. It also makes it easier to browse photos and search for them. If you put your photos in some folder, chances are you won’t be as likely to go and look at them.
You are partly right on that, but a picture that was deleted, will also not appear in a search, or a memory.
A Cloud is not a Backup! And therefore the Backup-Problem exist, independent of the location of the picture.
And the month, I can recover something I have deleted on the iCloud, also will be only relevant, if you become aware of the false delete, within that month.
@winmaciek LOL. I hear you! As I was dealing with repeated alerts from iCloud this weekend reminding me that my storage is full, all I was thinking was exactly what you said. It is inevitable that I’ll have to order that level one day. Will check out Gemini Photos!
@cornchip Same thing as above! Will check out Gemini! Seem to recall MacSparky talking about other similar services so may try to find those ones as well!
@Ulli Yes, I regularly back up Photos from my iPhone to a HD via a workflow using Hazel and Dropbox. So I have saved practically every photo file I’ve ever taken with an iPhone and the vast majority of what my wife has taken. Agreeing with @winmaciek that I don’t want to move ‘good’ photos off of Apple Photos because I really enjoy how it surfaces old photos and creates albums, etc.
The primary issue that I need to address is that my family members have just not managed their Photos account over time and removed the ‘useless’ ones (screenshots, memes, photos that serve a 1x purpose and are essentially useless/taking up space after that, etc.) and now it is out of control. Same goes for Messagings and sharing media there as well - it all adds up! Using a service like Gemini or similar will go a long way to helping us out .
