I have a 64GB iPad Air (4th Gen) and at this point it’s so difficult to make space for iOS 26 beta updates, not to mention the RC that just came out. I’ve offloaded basically everything I can, but there is still 10GB of photos and 8GB of messages that iPadOS just won’t offload to make room. Is there anything I can do? I’m totally stumped.
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You can backup your photos to a USB-C storage device (or Mac, etc) using CCC Mobile Backup. But when you say messages, are you talking about iMessage or email?
If this is email that is no longer on the server, just connect to your email provider, via IMAP, and drag the messages back up to the server.
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These are photos and messages that are stored in iCloud.
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So you are out of storage in iCloud? 
I guess I would increase my iCloud storage for one month to make room. Or since I have a free gmail account with more than 10GB free I might transfer the 10GB of photos to Google.
But I would definitely back up my photos using CCC Backup, or some other method, before deleting them from iCloud.
Hopefully another MPU has a better idea.
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I’d probably sign out, update, and sign back in if iCloud won’t otherwise let that storage go. That’s a pain, so I would get off the beta updates to make it less frequent.
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No, I think the OP is struggling to make space on their iPad to do the IOS 26 upgrade.
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You could reset to factory defaults, upgrade and then sign back into iCloud. But at this point are stuck between a rock and a hard place going forward.
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I went through this myself this week when i wanted to install iPadOS 26 on my 13“ Impression 2018 with 64GB. System kept telling me I needed another 10GB and despotische my efforts I couldn’t offload enough - especially the foto library. Thing was that even when turning off photo sync and deleting the photos app, the photo library stayed. Based on ChatGPT there was no way to remove the library itself unless I would delete all fotos by myself 
.
In the end I decided to wipe my iPad and give it a fresh start - after that I successfully upgraded to iPadOS 26. at the moment I take the time to sync my iCloud stuff and tinker with the OS. Third party apps will only be added over time and when they have an iPadOS 26 update …
I certainly enjoy it to start afresh this time - and the OS works decent on my 2018 iPad Pro :).
You can also install updates connecting your iPad to your Mac. The update is downloaded to your Mac and installed from there
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Excellent! This is exactly the tip I was looking for.