I am a packrat born of and raised by packrats, so it’s no surprise that I accumulate clutter both physical and digital (see yesterday’s entry about cleaning up excess browser tabs, for example). My phone regularly tells me I have no storage left. I delete just enough photos that it stops telling me that and move on with my day. This approach does not work when there’s an iOS update, because iOS updates need way more than the space freed up by deleting a handful (or even several handfuls of photos). And even when I free up the however many gigs it says it needs and download the update, it’ll then refuse to actually install, so last time I tried I just gave up and have been running an old version. This worked fine for a while. Sure, I couldn’t install an app I wanted to try because it wasn’t supported for my iOS version, but I took that as sign I didn’t need that app. But this week, an app I do need wouldn’t update, so I had to get serious.

I could have probably gotten all the free space I needed just from deleting the Happy Color app, since it’s using 9.71 GB at this point, four years plus into coloring a lot of pictures every week. That wasn’t really a viable option, though, since I like all those tiny hits of dopamine and would just have to find another source of them. (And I don’t entirely trust that I could upload my progress to the cloud and get everything back if I deleted the app, even though I mostly was able to when I switched phones.) Someday my fixation will wane, but for now, I want to keep coloring.
So that left me no choice but to delete masses and masses of photos, take the 19+ GB down to under 10. That’s more than 5000 images to go through, more than 5000 decisions to make. Which of my emotional support photos and memes are dispensable? This shouldn’t be so hard. All these images are backed up. I can download them and put them back on my phone later if I want to. I lived for decades without having any photos at my fingertips at all times. I don’t even go back and look at older photos on my phone all that often. More recent ones, sure, to share something I saw or did, but lately I’ve only looked at the older ones to see what more I can delete. Awake in the middle of the night, I though about just wiping out every photo and starting fresh, but paused since I’ve learned that 3 a.m. brain doesn’t always have the best ideas.

After some sleep and some caffeine, I asked Mr. Karen for reassurance and then plunged in, deleting photo after photo just from the thumbnails. First almost everything from before December 2022. That only got me 1GB though, because I’d already been through most of those months more than once, chipping away at things. Going through another couple months got me another 1.5 GB. And so on, until I had 7 GB free and started the iOS download. It started with about 18 minutes remaining and proceeded nicely before stalling at “about 0 seconds remaining”. Then it threw an error message that told me it failed but not why. I suspected it wanted more free space as per usual, so I deleted more photos, giving me me 8.6 GB free. More space, same result: unable to download. I did more deleting, got up to 10.2GB free. Rebooted the phone. Tried the download again, but got an “Unable to Check for Update” error. Hit “Try Again”. Same result. Rebooted the phone again. Same error. Turned off wifi, which got me to update requested status, then about 2 hours remaining. Backed out, turned on wifi, got stuck in checking for updates again. Turned off wifi, got to the about 2 hours again, which went to about 1 hour in less than 10 minutes, then up to 6 hours after another 10 minutes. Backed out. Rebooted the wifi. Rebooted the phone. Reconnected the phone to wifi. About 15 minutes remaining. Then 18 minutes next I looked. Then failed. Tried the second of the two versions on offer, opting out of using cellular data if wifi dropped. 19 minutes remaining to start. 3 seconds when I went back to check … progess bar halfway … preparing update?!?!! … progress bar moving, moving, moving … so close … still preparing though bar looks full … what’s my next move if this doesn’t work? this will work, right? got farther than any previous attempt … downloaded. Whew. Time to click the Install Now button. Do I dare? I have to dare. Verifying update … no progress bar to console me … Unable to Install Update. Shit. Retry I guess, then go a-Googling again when that fails. My device is compatible. Storage is now only 4GB free. Deleted yet more photos, enough so Happy Color used more storage than photos. Tried install with 5.3 free. Phone shut down on its own. Is that good? Up pops the Apple logo and a progress bar, so it seems like something is happening? Fingers crossed. Holy shit that worked! And only a whole afternoon spent trying different things.

I need to set up some routine for photo management so I don’t have this issue the next time I need to update the OS. I also need to pay for more storage the next time I get a new phone. Now that I’ve pretty much given up on using a standalone digital camera, I need space for all the photos I like to take.

*****
On this date in 2023: Spider Mums, Spider Mums
2022: Festive Decor
2021: Stu-stu-studios
2020: My Friend the Creek
2019: Getting Stuff Done
2018: Only 10 Hours on the Road
2017: First World Frustration
2016: Sifting and Sorting
2015: The Crowdedest Place on Earth
2014: On Still Not Acquiring Sock Monkeys
2013: On Not Acquiring Sock Monkeys
2012: On Shimmer and Glitter
2010 and 2011: No journal entries
2009: November Check-in
2007 and 2008: No entries
2006: Many Pictures, Few Words
2004 and 2005: No entries
2003: Memory Lane
2002: Ugly on the Inside