- iCloud Photo Library
- How iCloud Manages Your Storage
- How to Delete Photos in iCloud Photo Library
- How to Recover Deleted Photos on iPhone
- Tips If Your iCloud Storage Is Full
- 5 Tips If Your iPhone Storage Is Full
- 4 Hail Mary Tips If You’re Desperate
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Do Not Delete Photos to Free Up Space!
Be careful when deleting photos or videos from your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or iCloud web app if you use iCloud Photo Library. Doing so may permanently remove the deleted photos from all devices.
Plus, it’s not even necessary in most cases, as both iOS and macOS can automatically manage storage space allocated to photos. Continue reading to learn how that works.
Until recently, the base models of Apple’s iOS devices had only 16GB of data storage. At the same time, the iPhone became our go-to camera for taking photos and recording videos.
As a result, many users ran out of available storage space and thus had to regularly delete or transfer photos and videos to an external hard drive or a cloud storage account like Dropbox.
Then Apple introduced the iCloud Photo Library, which keeps all of your photographic memories synced across all of your devices. That’s great, because a photo or video you took on your iPhone would automatically appear on your iPad or Mac. Even edits and changes would synchronize seamlessly (most of the time).
With the iCloud Photos Library, gone are the days of manual synchronization!
iCloud Photo Library works seamlessly with the Photos app to keep your photos and videos securely stored in iCloud and up to date on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, Apple TV, and iCloud.com.
Apple
iCloud Photo Library
To enable iCloud Photo Library, perform the following steps:
- On a Mac with OS X 10.10.3 or later:
- Go to System Preferences > iCloud
- Click Options next to Photos
- Select iCloud Photo Library
- On an iOS device, such as iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 8.3 or later:
- Go to Settings > iCloud > Photos
- Turn on iCloud Photo Library
- On Apple TV (4th generation) with tvOS 9.2 or later:
- Go to Settings > Accounts > iCloud > iCloud Photo Library
- On a Windows PC:
Despite all the performance issues I had when iCloud Photo Library was first released, I have used it ever since. It meets my requirements and fits well into my photo editing workflow, so I have enabled it on all of my devices.
It’s also worth noting that at its 2021 Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple announced improvements to iCloud Photos, including:
- Faster initial iCloud Photos library sync. When you upgrade to a new device, iCloud Photos sync more quickly, so you can get to your photo library faster.
- Import photos from another Photos library. Now you can import photos, including edits, from a second Photos library.
I’m sure many users will appreciate these enhancements.
How iCloud Manages Your Storage
iCloud Photo Library has two settings that determine how it manages storage on your devices:
- Download originals, or
- Optimize storage
As the name implies, the first option downloads and stores full-resolution photos and videos from the cloud. If your device runs out of available storage space, iCloud Photo Library will stop synchronizing to that device until space becomes available again.
Note: Newer versions of iOS and macOS warn you if you try to enable “Download originals” but your photo library is larger than the local storage.
I use this setting on my iMac Pro, but my photo library is stored on a LaCie Big5 Thunderbolt 2 RAID (an external hard drive) with plenty of disk space.
On all my iOS devices, as well as on my 13-inch MacBook Pro, I use the Optimize Storage setting.
If you turn on Optimize Storage, iCloud Photo Library automatically manages the size of your library on your device. Your original photos and videos are stored in iCloud and space-saving versions are kept on your device.
Your library is optimized only when you need space, starting with the photos and videos you access least. You can download the original photos and videos over Wi-Fi or cellular when you need them. You can use Optimize Storage on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac.
Apple
As you can see, Optimize Storage virtually eliminates the need to manually delete photos or videos in order to save storage space.
But what if you want to remove photos regardless?
How to Delete Photos in iCloud Photo Library
As noted above, iCloud Photo Library keeps all of your photos and videos synced across all of your devices. That includes deleted images. As a result, when you delete a photo or video on one device, it will be deleted from all of your other devices as well!
This is a lesson you don’t want to learn the hard way.
Technically, upon deletion, iCloud Photo Library moves the deleted image into a unique folder called “Recently Deleted.” It remains there for about 40 days before vanishing forever.
How to Recover Deleted Photos on iPhone
You can recover deleted pictures from an iOS device or Mac, as long as they’re in the Recently Deleted folder. To access that folder, go to Albums in the Photos app and scroll down to the bottom.
Note that in iOS 13 and later, the “recently deleted” folder no longer appears as a thumbnail as pictured above, but as a blue text link (it’s still in the same location).
Once you’ve navigated to the folder, simply select the pictures you’d like to restore and tap “Recover” in the bottom right corner of the screen.
You can also recover bookmarks, contacts, calendars and files that have been deleted from your synced devices. Just log into icloud.com, click or tap “Account Settings,” and scroll down to the bottom of the page. You’ll see a list of links that allow you to restore all of the above within 30 days after deletion. After that, they’re gone forever.
Note that with iCloud Photo Library, it is not possible to delete an image from only one device!
Instead, deleted pictures will disappear from all devices that have iCloud Photo Library enabled. As an alternative, you can hide selected images, which places them in a unique album called “Hidden.”
Tips If Your iCloud Storage Is Full
If you run out of iCloud storage space, your devices might stop backing up (to iCloud) and they won’t be able to upload photos and videos to iCloud Photo Library, among other potential problems.
If you see a warning like the one in the screenshot above, the first thing you want to do is figure out exactly what apps are using that space.
To do that in iOS 13, go to: Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > Manage Storage.
By understanding how iOS manages your iCloud storage, you can find potential culprits, such as messaging apps, that hog unreasonable amounts of storage space.
For example, you might have configured WhatsApp to indefinitely hold onto each media attachment you receive. If so, those attachments would likely count as photos in the Manage Storage overview graph — even if they’re not photos and videos you’ve taken with your own device.
Another culprit I often see are iCloud backups from devices that are no longer in use.
Last but not least, if you use Family Sharing, make sure the problem isn’t that another family member is using all of your storage space.
Once you identify which apps are using your iCloud storage, you can decide if you really need to hold onto that data. Most apps give you an option to delete their data (such as the attachments from messaging apps) without having to remove the app. So try that first!
What to Do If It’s Not an App
If you’ve determined that the problem is indeed the photos or videos in your iCloud Photo Library, then you have only two choices:
- Permanently delete photos and videos from iCloud Photo Library
- Upgrade your iCloud storage
If you decide to permanently delete media from your photo library, make sure you have a good backup first. The easiest way to create a backup is on a Mac that has “Download originals” enabled. Why?
Because you can simply use the Photos.app on that Mac to export all photos and videos to an external drive (or Dropbox) before deleting them.
Once you’ve created a backup, you can delete photos from iCloud.com or any device that has iCloud Photo Library enabled. Just don’t forget to also empty the “Recently Deleted” album, because otherwise you won’t see your storage space free up right away.
The better approach, in my opinion, is to spend a few extra dollars to upgrade your iCloud storage. Current pricing is reasonable, as you can see below:
- 50GB: $0.99 per month
- 200GB: $2.99 per month
- 2TB: $9.99 per month
5 Tips If Your iPhone Storage Is Full
If you have plenty of iCloud storage but your iPhone or iPad is running out of space, here are some tips to find out what apps are using the space and how you can free some of it up.
1. Offload or Delete Unused Apps
Apple introduced a feature in iOS 11 called “Offload Unused Apps.” If you enable that feature in Settings > General > iPhone Storage, iOS will automatically remove unused apps when you’re low on storage while preserving the documents and data associated with those apps.
That’s an excellent way to free up space without having to worry about losing data.
Alternatively, I recommend simply deleting apps you don’t need. If you’ve had your iPhone for a while, chances are that you’re experiencing “app creep.” That’s an accumulation of apps you’ve downloaded over time but never actually use.
I go through my apps every couple of months and remove what I haven’t used in a while. Not only does that free up space, it also removes clutter and makes the apps I do use easier to find.
2. Enable iCloud Photo Library + Optimize Storage
Most other posts on this topic I’ve seen recommend deleting unwanted photos and videos. However, as we’ve discussed in this article already, that’s not necessary if you use iCloud Photo Library and enable “Optimize storage.”
By doing so, iOS manages its photo storage automatically to make sure photos and videos don’t consume significant local storage space.
3. Review Large Attachments
The second cool feature Apple introduced in iOS 11 is called “Review Large Attachments,” and you can also find it under “iPhone Storage” in the Settings app.
The feature is a way of seeing how much space photo and video attachments in the Messages app are taking up. Plus, you can quickly remove individual attachments and thus free up space on your iOS device.
4. Review the Storage Usage of Apps
If none of the above has helped so far, it’s time to figure out what apps are consuming most of your storage space. To do that, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and look at the app list.
If you see offending apps, you have a couple of options:
- Delete app data (if the app offers that option)
- Offload app
- Delete app
Some apps, such as the built-in Podcasts app, allow you to remove downloaded episodes directly from within the iPhone Storage screen. Others may allow you to delete data from within the app.
If you can’t do either, consider offloading or deleting the app.
There are some apps that tend to accumulate vast amounts of data. Facebook is such an example. So it might be worthwhile removing such offending apps, restarting the device, and seeing if that helped.
Either way, you can easily re-download the app and continue using it without having lost any data.
5. Clear Safari Cache
Safari — much like any other browser — leverages cache to speed up your browsing experience. That cache can grow in size over time. While I assume Apple is smart enough to let Safari manage its cache properly, some users have had success by clearing that cache to free up space.
To do so, go to Settings > Safari > Clean History and Website Data.
Note that by doing so, you’ll lose your browsing history and all cookies. That means you’ll have to re-login to every page that Safari had a cookie for.
4 Hail Mary Tips If You’re Desperate
While browsing other articles on this subject, I’ve seen other tips that I don’t think are going to help. But if everything else fails, I guess they’re worth trying.
1. Reset All Settings
Resetting your settings won’t erase any of your data. So I don’t know why you would want to try that. But if you do, go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings.
2. Backup And Restore
I highly recommend automatically backing up your iPhone to iCloud every night. If you don’t have sufficient space in iCloud, you can use iTunes to back up your device when you connect it to your computer.
Some people have suggested creating and restoring a backup to fix the storage problem. I don’t see how that’s going to work, unless you use third-party software to remove certain data from the backup file.
But instead of doing that, just remove the data from the phone directly, instead of going through the hassle or modifying a backup file.
3. Turn Off iCloud Drive
Another useless tip I’ve seen is to turn off iCloud Drive. By default, iOS uses an “optimize storage” setting for iCloud Drive. That means iOS only keeps copies of recently used items on your device. Everything else lives in the cloud and does not consume local storage space.
4. Buy a New iPhone
If you just got a new (or used) phone and it only has 16GB of storage, this tip might sound corny. The good news is that Apple has increased the minimum storage space in all new iPhone models to 64GB.
So going forward, there should be much less of a risk of running out of space.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
You don’t have to delete anything. Just make sure you have enabled “Optimize iPhone Storage” as described above. That way, iOS will automatically remove photos and videos from your iPhone, but will keep them in cloud storage.
You will still “see” those photos on your iPhone, but that’s a low-resolution thumbnail rather than the actual photo or video.
Depending on whether you have “Optimize iPhone Storage” enabled in the settings and if your iPhone has finished syncing with iCloud, iOS may remove photos and videos that were not downloaded to your device before you disabled iCloud.
But don’t worry: those photos will still be available in iCloud, and you can access them from any computer by visiting icloud.com.
It could be that you’re not using iCloud Photo Library. Or, you might be out of iCloud storage, which means that iOS cannot move the deleted image to the “Recently Deleted” album.
You can see which apps are consuming storage space on your iPhone by going to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
Unfortunately, it is not. Your Mac and iPhone either sync nothing, sync everything, or automatically manage storage.
That has the same effect as deleting a photo or video on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac with iCloud Photo Library enabled. In other words, the photo or video would be removed from all other iCloud Photo Library-enabled devices.
If you don’t want deleted files to be synchronized, do not enable iCloud Photo Library. Of course, by disabling iCloud Photo Library, your devices won’t sync any edits or changes to photos or videos.
Double check to make sure you don’t have “Upload to My Photo Stream” enabled. That’s the predecessor of iCloud Photo Library, and when enabled, it creates copies of your images, but it doesn’t synchronize deleted files or any changes to your pictures.
Any photos or videos stored in “My Photo Stream” take up space and may not be subject to the “Optimize iPhone Storage” settings. If everything else fails, connect your iPhone via USB to a Mac or Windows machine, transfer all pictures, and then reset your iPhone to factory settings.
When you set it up new, make sure to enable iCloud Photo Library from the get-go. If that doesn’t work, or you don’t feel confident doing it, go to an Apple Store and ask for help.
With iCloud Photo Library enabled, the Photos app will upload any images or videos to iCloud. If you have iCloud Photo Library disabled, Photos stores any imported items locally, without uploading them to iCloud.
You can create a second library using the Photos app and store it on a drive with sufficient storage space (like the LaCie). You can then regularly export the oldest images (using a Smart Album) and import them into the secondary library.
Just make sure to backup your second library so that you won’t lose any data if the hard disk fails. I’d recommend a quality RAID unit in combination with daily backups.
Do Not Delete Photos to Free Up Space!
Using the iCloud photos library can be a convenient way to manage your digital images and videos. However, many iPhone users have lost parts of (or all of) their library as a result of not fully understanding how the system works.
If you came to this page wondering how to free up space on iPhone, just remember that taking that step is no longer necessary. By utilizing the “Optimize Storage” feature described above, your iPhone will only download full-resolution photos when you request them, freeing up your device’s storage space.
Of course, utilizing that feature requires you to sync your photos on iCloud. Anything you delete from one device will also be deleted from every other synced device. And they can only be recovered for 40 days. After that, the files are gone for good. So it’s worth taking a few minutes to make sure your settings are properly configured, and to make sure you understand how synced photos are stored and deleted.
I hope this article clarifies some of the misconceptions when it comes to storage needs and deleting photos from iPhone. But if you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.
I’m a healthy living and technology enthusiast.
On this blog, I share in-depth product reviews, actionable information and solutions to complex problems in plain and easy-to-understand language.
I posted a few questions here yesterday, but I can’t see in on the thread. Please let me know if I should write again the message, thanks!
Hello, thank you for this post and the youtube video, all this information has been really useful to me! I have a question I would like to ask you.
I have an iphone with 256GB and and imac Pro with 2TB. My iphone is almost full, mostly of pictures because I’m a photographer and use the camera a lot to shoot photos and videos. My iCloud plan is 50GB nd obviously is not enough to backup all my media.
I want to make more space in my iphone and I think the easier option would be to upgrade my plan from 50GB to 2TB, but if possible I want to avoid to pay $9.99 per month in order to do this.
My questions is: is there any way to use all the space available (1.5TB) in my iMac Pro to store the photos and videos? If possible I want to try to avoid any manual procedure.
Thank you very much in advance!!
Hey Juan!
If you want to keep the sync feature, you have to have enough space in iCloud.
PS: Apologies for the late reply. Your comment got accidentally deleted by my anti-spam plugin and I just found out about it.
Hello, so I ran out of storage and bought for 200gb of iCloud storage to upload more photos but for some reason the icloud photos shows only at 1% until now. Is there anything I can do so I can upload all of my photos to icloud. when i see the icloud the backup is already there, but the photos was not. so im curious why the photos did not insert into icloud. i am fully used of wifi. or maybe the photos was sync during charging ? pleasee give any solution huhu.
Make sure your iPhone is connected to Wi-Fi and power. But even then, the upload can take a looooong time, depending on your internet connection and the amount of photos/videos you have.
Lots of great info! I have 3 questions that I hope you could answer.
If my phone had the the Optimize Photos enabled and I later disabled the option, would the photos on my iphone convert back to full resolution photos?
Does the icloud syncing take place once every 24 hours if plugged in and available to WIFI?
How much memory does the space saving low resolution photos use? KBs?
Thanks!
Phil
Hey Phil,
If you switch from Optimize Storage to Download Originals, then iOS will download all the originals. While the phone is plugged in and connected to WiFi, iOS keeps synching changes. As far as the storage consumption of low-res photos is concerned, I don’t know if there is a way to measure it but it’s probably in the KB range.
Cheers,
Michael
Thanks for the enlightening article Michael. I had a question about iCloud photo sync and restoring a new device from an old device’s backup.
My situation is I did not have iCloud photos enabled on any devices when I got my iPhone 12 and restored it from my iPhone Xs. This copied the local camera roll (amongst everything else) from the Xs to the 12. I have recently turned on iCloud photos on the newer iPhone 12 (as well as a Mac); it’s all synced and everything is good.
I still have the Xs, still with its camera roll in similar state from when I restored a backup to the 12, and would like to turn on iCloud photos on the Xs too. It shouldn’t have any photos locally that weren’t duplicated to the 12. The question is this:
Will iCloud photos recognize the iPhone Xs’s photos as “the same” (99.9% of them have not been edited or modified in any way while stored on the 12), and not end up making duplicate cloud copies for all the photos on the older Xs that have already been uploaded via the 12?
I haven’t been able to find a clear answer – this isn’t a case of “I already had iCloud photo enabled *and then* got initialized a new device as a restore from an older one,” but rather going in the opposite direction of setting up iCloud photos.
Thanks!
Hi John,
Yes, the sync service should recognize the local photos as duplicates and not re-download them to your iPhone Xs.
Cheers,
Michael
Thanks Michael. I suspected that to be the case but appreciate the confirmation before flipping that iCloud Photos switch On for the older phone. It is indeed as you said – the older phone is finished “uploading” its library and there are no duplicates or bump up in the shared iCloud storage usage.
Very insightful! Wonder if you can help.
I have iCloud Photos enabled on my iPhone 11 (64G). I’ve set it to ‘Optimize iPhone storage’. My Mac Mini is also on iCloud Photos and is set to “Download full resolution pictures” – the Photos library is over 750GB. My iCloud storage is at 2TB.
My problem: My iPhone is running out of storage. My local device photos storage takes up 27GB of my 64GB – even though I have ‘Optimize iPhone storage’ turned on. I couldn’t figure out why my iPhone is not managing storage better by reducing my local photos storage – it just wouldn’t shrink!
I am contemplating backing up my iPhone, then reset with a fresh start with iCloud Photos Optimize iPhone storage turn don – and hope it would better manage my photos storage. I recently bought a new iPad Air and started fresh there and photos storage seemed reasonable there.
What do you think?
Hi Mo,
your issue could be caused by another app that stores photos on your device (iMessage, WhatsApp…) or there is something wrong with iCloud’s optimize agent. You can see under Settings > General > iPhone Storage if it’s the Photos app or something else. If it is Photos, you could try to turn iCloud Photos off and select to remove any photos that haven’t been downloaded yet. Then turn it back on.
If that doesn’t fix the issue, you might have to reset the phone as you mentioned.
Cheers,
Michael
Thanks Michael,
I’m curious how the optimize agent decides what to keep locally and what not. Favourites? Photos in albums? Edited Photos. My “Recents” album has an astounding 138,145 photos in it – I wonder if that’s what’s causing the local storage to bulge like it does?
Based on what I know, iOS keeps the most recently accessed photos in full-res. Did you import a bunch of photos lately? If so, it might take a while for them to get uploaded and removed from the local device.
Hi mike,
I set my iphone on optimize storage, without understanding the system, i deleted my photos and my recently deleted to free my iphone space.
and then I read your blog and panicked.
I checked on my iphone there’s nothing left on my album.
but I checked my icloud on icloud.com it still there (on recently deleted album and I can recovered it on icloud albums)
now I am too afraid to connect my charging cable and turning on my wifi on the same time
do you have any advice on my situation?
can i recovered it on iphone or what do i have to change on my icloud settings?
thank you so much!
Hi Cresentia,
I’d restore and download the images directly from icloud.com before connecting your iPhone to the internet again. Once synced up, you can re-add those images to your photo library.
PS: Apologies for the late reply. Your comment got accidentally deleted by my anti-spam plugin and I just found out about it.
Hi mac. Im currently using iphone xr which contain 64 gb. But here my iphone storage always full. The highest rank goes to photo. But when i check my photo album it only have 1000 plus of photos. And yet when i check back my iphone storage it become 28 gb. I have to delete my apps on my iphone. Now only left a few of it. How to fix the photo storage without deleting any picture?
Do you have iCloud Photos enabled? If not, enable it and it’ll free up your storage by uploading photos to iCloud.
My son has an iPhone XR or X and he ran out of iCloud storage in June 20 (did nothing about it), his phone’s screen was smashed in October 20 and therefore it can’t be opened to back it up to iTunes. So he has photos on his phone from June 20 to October 20 that have not uploaded.
He has just purchased more iCloud storage will these photos ever upload if he can’t get into the phone and if not is there a way to get them off the phone.
Hi Karen,
If the phone is operational and connected to Wifi, it should upload the images. You can go to iCloud.com and verify if that’s the case.
You could also try connecting the phone via Lighting cable to a Mac and see if you can extract photos via that route.
Cheers,
Michael
Hi Michael,
I have a problem that no one seems to be able to answer. My old iPhone recently broke (it was an 8+ 256gb) so I bought a new one (similar specs, 256gb) but ran into a problem. I have 1TB of iCloud space utilized (mostly photos), and unlike my last phone where all of the photos were physically accessible on the old phone and optimized (so I still had extra space on my phone), restoring the photos now in bulk does not seem possible because the phone runs out of space before the iCloud backup is completed. I think it’s because the iCloud backup tries downloading uncompressed photos before optimizing them again. Not to mention it takes literal days of downloading 100,000+ photos to get to the point where the download fails. Do you have any recommendations? I tried calling Apple tech several times to no avail. I just want to be able to access all of my photos on this new phone, as I was able on my last phone. Thank you.
Hi Ginny,
if you set up your new phone from scratch and enable iCloud Photos with Optimize Storage enabled (it’s enabled by default if your iCloud library is larger than your physical storage capacity), then iOS won’t try to download the originals but only the low-res thumbnails. So I don’t see how you could run into storage problems on your new iPhone. Also, with iCloud Photos enabled, iCloud backup doesn’t contain any photos.
So I’m not sure what exactly your problem is or how you ran into it. Worst case, erase the phone and start over if that’s an option.
Cheers,
Michael
Hi Michael, I have a problem with my Whatsapp album on icloud. Apparently there are 387 photos in it but they appear grey and cannot be deleted. The Whatsapp album on my phone is empty! This is despite me resetting my “new” 2nd hand iphone 5 back to factory settings before using it. As a result my icloud is so full that I cannot do a backup.
How can I empty this album? Or can I just delete the icloud whatsapp album and then make a new one?
Thank you
Did you try removing the album from icloud.com (on a Mac or PC)?
I haven’t yet, is that safe? Would it remove the album on my phone too and would I be able to create a new Whatsapp album which is then hopefully empty but connected to Whatsapp?
Thank you
Hi Bobbie,
depends on what you mean by safe :) If you remove the WhatsApp album from icloud.com, its contents will likely get moved to the “recently deleted” album. Worst case scenario, you’ll lose your WhatsApp photos (if you don’t have a backup). I can only assume that WhatsApp will create a new (empty) album when the launch the app next.
Hi Michael. Thanks for all this very clear info. I have to send my iPad in for service (broken screen). I have had iCloud Photos and “Optimize Space” enabled on the device since I bought it. If I sign out of iCloud and erase the device as instructed, what happens to the photos that were taken using that iPad? Do they stay in iCloud? Are they deleted? I read conflicting reports but I bet you know. I’ve backed my whole photo library up to an external drive. Enjoy the java!
Hi Amy,
if your iCloud Photo Library is fully synced up before you erase the iPad, you won’t lose any data, photos or videos. If there are pending items that haven’t been synced yet, they’d be gone. To check, just open the Photos.app and make sure it says “Updated Just Now.”
Hi Michael,
Thank you for your helpful website.
I have an IPhone 11Pro and use icloud to back up my phone.
I am old-school, and also use Time Machine through a hard wire to back up my phone to my imac desktop and it’s external hard drives, every month.
If I enable ‘optimize photos’ on my iphone to free up space on my phone, and then only original resolution images are stored in the icloud and optimized versions are stored on my phone, what sort of images are backed-up to my Imac when I do my manual back up every month from my phone. Optimzed or full resolution?
If full resolution, then I am all good to go.
If they are optimized and thus a smaller resolution, how do you recommend I proceed? Should I disable the optimize feature on my iphone?
Even though I want a properly functioning phone with adequate storage space, my primary goal is to have the full resolution original images saved and backed-up on my Imac. I would rather disable optimize photos on my phone so that original images are transferred to my Imac and then just make sure that I am regularly deleting large files from my phone so that I do not run out of storage.
Thank you very much,
Tim
Hi Tim,
with “optimize photos” turned on, your backup wouldn’t include any full-res images (if any at all). My recommendation is to use the Photos app on your iMac, turn on “download originals” and make sure the photo library is part of your Time Machine backup.
I store my Photos library on an external SSD that I back up to the cloud via Backblaze.
Cheers,
Michael
Great article! In this scenario – “download originals” to iMac or external hard drive – do the packaged contents count towards iCloud storage? I have over 600GB of photos on an external HD. I utilize less than 200GB across devices today and was wondering if turning on iCloud Photos on my Mac will bump me over my current subscription.
Hi Kef,
what do you mean by packaged contents? But if you decided to upload your 600GB worth of photos into iCloud, then you’d have to purchase more iCloud storage.
Cheers,
Michael
I bought you a coffee. Thanks for answering so many questions on your articles!
My question is this; if you delete attachments from your iPad, will it delete on your iPhone? The wife’s darn iPad on has 16GB and even though I have iCloud optimized storage turned on (on both devices), she is still so low on space that I can’t do the update. When checking what is taking up too much space, the “attachments” has a lot. I take it this is email and iMessage’s attachments. I figure if it’s en email attachment, it would stay on the email server with the email but not sure about the iMessage attachments. I already deleted a few videos under that “Attachments” heading and then worried I was deleting them from her iPhone.
Hi Marco!
I saw it and appreciate your support!
I just compared my iPhone and iPad and even though both have iCloud support enabled for iMessages, they show both completely different attachments. So I’m assuming that deleting an attachment from the iPad won’t remove it from the iPhone and vice versa.
MK, question on my 6S+ iPhone my ( wife’s phone ) she lost all her photos and there is not enough storage. We are going to buy a lot more storage on iCloud but will the photos come back on if we do this. Also these phones do everything we need, we are not that tech savvy so…..
Thanks Rudy and Sandy Gonzales
Hey Rudy and Sandy!
I don’t know how those photos got lost but if they’re neither on the local device nor in iCloud (check via iCloud.com from a PC/Mac), I don’t think buying extra iCloud storage would allow you to recover them.
However, since you can up and downgrade iCloud storage anytime, it’d definitely give it a shot!
Very helpful article! I currently have an iPhone 11 with 128 GB capacity. I maintain a 200 GB iCloud subscription and in the past into enabled about 92 GB of Backup in iCloud, which INCLUDES Photo Library. Once I turned on iCloud photos, I am now out of space in my iCloud (since it also includes other family data usage). My concern is that my iCloud is backing up the same Photo Library TWICE. Is this the case? And, if I turn off iCloud photos, then will my Backup still have my Photo Library?
Hi Alice,
not that’s not the case. With iCloud Photo Library enabled, new backups won’t include any photos or videos from your library. However, old backup still have that data and you might want to delete them.
I would like to ask I am using iphone 6 (only one apple device) and for some reasons I need to re-upload my photo library from my iphone to the icloud. I have disabled icloud photos sync from my iphone and it says I have 30 days to make the backup of the photos and videos from icloud. How can I delete all the photos from the icloud WITHOUT deleting them from the iphone storage? And after deleting them form the icloud, if I turn back on the photos sync would it get the photos from my iphone to upload them to the icloud or it will also remove them from the iphone storage because I have deleted them from the icloud in the previous step?
Hi Jack,
You can’t turn iCloud Photo Library on and off as you please without losing any photos you deleted on either the iPhone or on iCloud. So you basically have two choices at this point: Use iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone (which I what I’d recommend) or turn it off and never turn it on again. If you do the latter, you’ll retain all photos you have on your iPhone right now (assuming the library is fully synced up). But if you start deleting photos from iCloud.com and then re-enable the iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone, all deletions will be synced to your iPhone and you’ll lose photos.
Helpful article. I would like to ask I am using iphone 6 (only one apple device) and for some reasons I need to re-upload my photo library from my iphone to the icloud. Currently, icloud is storing my photos (around 25GB out of 50GB limit), I messed up some settings and now icloud whenever is sync the iphone it says storage capacity is reached. I think it is instead of overwriting the previous photos on icloud from the iphone, it is adding another 25GB in the icloud thus reaching the limit capacity and hence backup failure.
I have disabled icloud photos sync from my iphone and it says I have 30 days to make the backup of the photos and videos from icloud. How can I delete all the photos from the icloud WITHOUT deleting them from the iphone storage? And after deleting them form the icloud, if I turn back on the photos sync would it get the photos from my iphone to upload them to the icloud or it will also remove them from the iphone storage because I have deleted them from the icloud in the previous step?
You’d have to go to icloud.com and delete the photos from there. Then turn iCloud Photo Library back on (on your iPhone) and sync everything.
Very helpful article, but I have a question:
So, a while ago I made Icloud transfer pictures from my iphone to my computer directly, that way, I don’t have to pay for extra storage to store my pictures on the cloud (as I don’t want that, I just want my pictures stored on my computer)
However, now it says that my icloud is full and it stopped syncing pictures to my computer, which to me, doesn’t make any sense, because I’m just sending the pictures to my computer.
The problem might be that I took a lot of photos in one particular month and it needed more than 5gb of icloud space to sync it to my pc (I don’t understand why it stopped syncing any pictures at all)
Is there a way to just delete the pictures stored in the cloud itself so It continues uploading the pictures directly from my iphone to my computer?
Thank you for your time and attention!
I’m not entirely sure I understand what you did – but if you used iCloud Photo Library to sync all photos from your iPhone to your Mac, then all those photos are ALSO in iCloud (that’s how the sync process works). What you’d have to do is create a new Photo library (using the Photos.app) that is NOT synchronized and then move (copy and delete) all your photos from your synchronized library into the not-synced one.
Article was very helpful. Thanks! But the constant pop-ups telling me who joined the newsletter were extremely distracting and quite annoying
Just a thought… Thanks again!
PS. As I was writing this note another one popped up and actually blocked the screen!
Hey Dan,
Thanks for the feedback, I much appreciate it! I’m trying to replicate the issue, so I’d appreciate any additional input you have.
When browsing the article in an incognito session, I got the “You might also be interested in XYZ article.” After clicking it away and waiting a little longer, I got the signup pop-up. That was all I ever saw.
Did you really get two newsletter sign up notifications?
Thanks,
Michael
What’s the usual delay between deleting a photo on iPhone (or Mac, or iCloud.com) and seeing it update on other devices?
My son has iCloud Photo Library enabled. He deletes items on the phone, goes into Recently Deleted items, and permanently deletes them. However, those items still appear on icloud.com and on his iMac. He thinks he has to delete everything in 3 places, which shouldn’t be the case.
I’m not familiar with the iPhone ecosystem, so I’m not sure if something is broken, or if he just has to wait.
Thanks!
Hi James,
that depends! For example, my iPhone pauses the sync process if it’s not connected to a charger and I have to manually “resume” the sync in the Photos.app if I want to enforce synching.
Also, make sure iCloud Photo Library is enabled on all your devices.
Cheers,
Michael
Hi Michael
I have been using an iMac and an iPad for some years now. I have a lot of pics and videos on my iMac and i also at some point loaded them all onto my iPad via iTunes. What happens when i turn on icloud photo library on both devices? Will all these photos be stored twice in icloud? Now if the solution is to get them off of my iPad first and then l optimize the ipad and sync, when i am away from wifi i won’t be able to see any photos on my iPad because they are only thumbnails, right? Lastly since these files on my iPad were transferred from my iMac would the files on my iPad be the same resolution as those on my iMac or would they have been transferred at a smaller resolution.
Hi Wayne,
I would expect that iOS/iCloud is smart enough to detect the duplicates and consolidate the library instead of keeping those images twice. But…you might end up with duplicates if the deduplication goes wrong. In that case, you’d have to remove the images first and then enable iCloud Photos on your iPad.
But you’re correct, if you use Optimize Storage, you won’t have access to all your originals (full-res) when you’re offline.
The photos you transferred via iTunes should be full-res at this point.
very helpful info about deleting/not deleting photos from iPad. Thanks
Thanks, this is useful. However, I am transferring all my pictures out of Photos as I want more control. I have iCloud Photos enabled on my iPhone and ‘Download & keep Originals’. But there are a lot of pictures on my iPhone which are not in Photos on iCloud. This seems odd and means I can’t export the pictures from iCloud but have to import them onto my hard drive direct from the phone – any idea why this is?
What happens when you disable iCloud Photos on two devices that previously were both synched to iCloud, then make various changes on both devices (delete some pictures on one, add some pictures on the other) and then reconnect them to iCloud Photos. Which device’s changes win?
Hi Beatrix,
I would assume that if there are conflicting changes, the last change (based on the timestamp) wins. So if you edit the same photo on two devices (while iCloud Photo Library is disabled on both), the edit you made last wins. If iCloud cannot resolve the conflict for whatever reason, you might end up with duplicate photos.
Cheers,
Michael
Ken
Michael the other day I had a brain explosion and changed my preference to keep original photos on my iPad. When I noticed
that most of my storage was gone I decided to change the preference back to optimise storage.
The change back does not seemed to have happened.
Can I turn off iCloud Photo Library and then turn it back on to sync to the optimised setting.
Or would be better to wipe the iPad and start again using an iCloud backup before my stupid act?
Thank You
Hi Ken,
I would give it a few days, and maybe a restart of the iPad to see if iOS starts releasing used storage space. If that doesn’t happen, you can turn off iCloud Photo Library and let it resync. If you don’t have any photos locally on your iPad that aren’t in iCloud yet, you won’t lose any data by doing so.
Cheers,
Michael
This is not helping us, we are in our 50’s and don’t understand any of this. We are just trying to utilize what we have but we have googled and tried Siri and cannot get any good info. We give up, thanks!!
Hi Allen & Kim,
If you have an Apple Store nearby, I’d recommend getting a one-on-one with a genius who can walk you through everything. If that’s not an option, maybe you have a tech-savvy relative who can assist.
Cheers,
Michael
My iphone has 250GB, and use optimized storage, My I cloud is far from being full (I bought extra), but my Mac was 121Gb when Icloud started to sync originals there. Of course, it stuck and I had upgrade memorie in Mac Book Pro, but now all pics which are there are not uploaded completely (even those which were before and I can’t do anything with them. How I can delete them all but be sure they all are safe in I cloud ( I checked they are still there, but i don’t dare to delete on Mac. IT SAYS THAT MY IPHOTO UPDATING RIGHT NOW AND I WILL lose EVERYTHING WHAT IS NOT COMPLETED, BUT IT LOOKS THEY NEVER WILL BE COMPLETED? THANKS in advance for your help!
I would just let is run until it’s done. That might take days — just based on my own experience.
I personally disagree with this. Even if you use iCloud services, your photos still take up lots of space, and when you want to scroll through photos, it takes way too long to load up. I prefer using google photos and permanently deleting the photos from my phone.
Hi there: Thanks so much for sharing your insights.
Can you direct me to any resources that will help me with the following:
1. i wish to have a complete and separate backup of all my photos on my mac book pro.
2. I have tons of photos in an old “iPhoto” library (from the original “iPhotos” with old operating systems) (may not be using correct terms..sorry)
and i also have a huge “photos” library…from new operating sys.
It’s been a bit confusing…sorting the two formats out. So far, I have tried manually to back up to a 1TB external hard drive through USB. I think it’s worked but it took forever and I really want to be sure. Also, i’m guessing I should probably try backing up to something else…but don’t know how or what.
Any hints or resources re: making full backups of the two formats of iphoto/photos libraries would be helpful. Hope this question makes some sense.
Thanks so much.
when i use the optimize photos feature on my iPhone, will the photos I take with my phone still be of the highest possible quality?
Yes!
I have ALL my photos in iCloud (4,156). I would like to not have all the pictures available on my mobile devices: such as the baby pictures of my adult nephews now that I have their children’s baby pictures. I am the family keeper of photos. Is there a way to archive folders and not make them accessible or is it best to download them to flash drives and delete them from the Cloud?
You’d have to download and then delete them from iCloud. However, I don’t recommend that.
I am not a fan of apple products because of this. I am trying to help my wife put her photos on the pc, then remove the photos from her phone. She had the cloud enabled, I downloaded the photos to the PC, but what you are saying is if I delete the photos from her phone we will lose them on the pc as well! How do I make sure that when she deletes them from the phone it will not be deleted from the PC?
Thanks!
Hi Phil,
You have to be a bit more specific. How did you download you’re wife’s photos to her PC? Using iCould Photo Library? Did you download the originals? If so, you can disable iCloud Photo Library and stop synching. That way, the photos won’t get deleted when you remove them from the iPhone (which isn’t even necessary if your goal is to save space). Alternatively, you could simply copy the photos out of her iCloud Photo Library and into a different folder on her PC.
Cheers
Michael
Nice explanation about iCloud functionality Michael!
Maybe you know about this issue. I have enabled iCloud Photos and Optimize iPhone Storage.
Last week I was looking for some holiday pictures on my iPhone, made in August. I missed a number of them. However, they are to be found when I log in on iCloud on my desktop via Safari.
I have changed from iPhone 7 to X in November and restored my iCloud backup. Maybe that has someting to do with it.
Any idea how to get them in sync again? (Thanks in advance)
Kind Regards, Ruud
Hi Rudd,
I suspect that iCloud Photo Library might not be enabled on your iPhone X, and thus, your new phone is out of sync with your photo library. Have you verified that all iCloud Photo services are enabled?
Cheers
Michael
thanks for your article. Here’s what I really want to do – take a photo or video on my iphone and have that photo/video automatically sync (via wifi) to my mac mini photo library, without anything being stored in a cloud – in other words, use iCloud or another service solely for automatic photo/video transfer to my server, and not for any cloud backup, sharing, or storage. Is there anything you are aware of that can help with this?
Hi Tom: I’m not aware of any such solution.
PhotoSync for iOS and it’s app companion for macOS are capable to upload directly your photos/videos from your iPhone directly to your Mac on wifi.
This is not free, but works perfectly and faster than the USB cable.
https://www.photosync-app.com
Hello
I would like to know why when I deleted pictures from my phone I don’t have more space available in ICloud.
With iCloud Photo Library enabled, deleted photos and videos get moved to the “Recently Deleted” album. Once you remove them from there, you should see your space increase.
HI, I recovered photos in my icloud that I originally deleted through my iPhone. Now, I can see the recovered photos on my iCloud on my MacBook, but I can not see the recovered photos on my iPhone. Will I ever be able to see the recovered photos on my iPhone.
If iCloud Photo Library is enabled on both your MacBook and iPhone, they should sync down. If your iPhone isn’t syncing, it could be out of storage space or you might have to restart it.
I would like to upload my iphoto library from my mac to iCloud. My iCloud photos currently only has the photos that are on my phone. I have followed the steps above and optimized storage but my Mac library isn’t syncing. How do I accomplish this?
How long ago have you enabled iCloud Photo Library, how fast is your internet connection and how large is your library?
Also, have you restarted your Mac already – just in case?
Thank you for replying saying deleted photos will sync back as soon as library goes back on. Is there anyway to stop this so they just stay on the cloud until I need them? Or do I need to delete them from the iCloud too to stop it? In which case iCloud not a very good storage option. ? Seems to be all or nothing.
Hi Angie,
iCloud Photo Library is an all or nothing by design. The only way to stop synching is to not enable it – or you can delete the unwanted images from the library permanently. iCloud Photo Library is an excellent storage options for photos and videos if you use it the way Apple intended :)
I’m planning to copy across the photos I don’t really need to an external hard drive on my iPad Air 2 and delete them on the iPad but I want to keep them on my iCloud library storage. Is it correct if I turn off the iCloud library on my iPad, back up to hard disk, then delete from iPad then enable the library they won’t redownload but will still be in the cloud? Also how do I access the files in the cloud? Is it a weblink/Page?
Many thanks
As soon as you turn iCloud Photo Library back on, the deleted photos will sync back from iCloud. You can see your photos online on icloud.com.
This was a very interesting article and comments.
I have 50GB of iCloud storage and don’t want to pay for more. This has now filled up after 3 years. I have cleared some space in iCloud by exporting the original photos in Photos (using “Export Originals”) to another drive and then deleting them from Photos (and hence from iCloud and other devices, my iPad and iPhone). Let’s call these photos the “XOPs” for “Exported Original Photos”. In this context I have several elementary questions; my apologies if some of these were (partially) answered above.
1) If I import any of these XOPs back into Photos, I expect that they will upload again into the cloud — is that correct? More generally, from what I can see, ANY kind of photo (from another camera, a GoPro, etc) if imported into Photos will upload to iCloud — is that correct?
2) What is the best practice for saving photos and videos in the long term? I have more than 10,000 Photos and videos over the past 3 years, and this goes way above my 50Gb iCloud storage. What I would like to do is have the most recent Photos in iCloud (and hence on my other devices) but older ones in the Photos facility on my laptop so that I can look at them at my leisure, make slideshows, videos, etc that use older (non-iCloud photos) as well as the new ones. What is the best way to deal with this short-term/long-term issue with photos?
3) What is the best way to sort photos in Photos? In iPhoto one could “sort by filename”, which was very useful since I could re-sequence my photos, export them with renamed sequence, and then import back into iPhoto and the new sequence was always preserved if I sorted by filename. I have read a lot on the internet about the “sort by filename” having been removed from Photos. Is there some workaround that allows you to sort (and retain) your photos in the sequence that you want?
4) I gather that the best practice is to check “iCloud Photo Library” and not check “My Photo Stream” in Settings/iCloud/Photos. Is that correct?
thanks
Hi Robert!
I updated the FAQ to answers your questions 1 and 2 – please check it out and let me know if those make sense. Re #3, Photos wants you to use its way of presenting photos and sorting by file name is not an option as far as I can tell.
Re 4) Correct.
I have a MacBook Pro, iPad and iPhone, all with iphoto iCloud turned on. But I really dont want duplicates of all my photos on all devices. I use my iPad a lot when traveling to download shows to watch on boring long flights. But my iPad is running out of storage due to the thousands of photos that I have stored (not by choice!). If I turn off iPhoto iCloud on my iPad and delete some photos, will they remain in the cloud and therefore on my phone and MacBook?
Please help
Hi Kerrie: I believe I answered all of your questions in my article – but here is a recap: iCloud Photo Library does not fill up your available storage space. Yes, you can turn it off on one device and delete photos without deleting them from iCloud and other devices.
My laptop photo storage is full, if you put all of your photos on a hard drive, is it safe to delete all of the photos from my laptop?
Great article. Thank you.
I do not have iCloud Library enabled on my MacBookPro or my iPhone 7s and don’t want to enable it. I have two related questions:
– When I take pictures with my iPhone, they show up in my laptop’s Photos>All Photos album and they only sometimes show up in Photos> My Photo Stream album. For instance the photos I took today were in the All Photos album but 6 hours later, they are still not in the My Photo Stream album. Can you help me to understand why? My Photo Stream is on on both devices.
– Although the photos sync from my iPhone to my computer, none of the album names/organization does. How can I get the albums structure to duplicate on both devices?
Thank you very much.
Hi Jane,
With only My Photo Stream enabled (but not iCloud Photo Library), nothing SYNCS. iCloud just COPIES your photo to the My Photo Stream folder (unreliable in your case, it seems like), but you won’t get the benefits of synching metadata, such as album names or hierarchies etc. That’s what iCloud Photo Library is for :)
“deleting photos may permanently remove them from all devices”
Hi, What do you mean, “may”? When WOULDN’T that happen? THX
I say may because, technically, deleted images get first transferred to the Recently Deleted album before Apple removes them permanently. If you are out of space, that move may not occur and images may get permanently deleted immediately.
So I optimize my photos and have the low resolution file on my phone and original size file on my cloud… what if I want to print one picture from my phone. Can i download one photo or video to have the original size back on my phone?
Yes, by just clicking on the photo or video, iOS will download the full resolution version on-demand.
They download when you click on them ( little white circle icon spins on picture)- but beware, it MAY not be giving you the original sized photo but an intermediate size it deems suitable for your device. I thought I’d saved full res photos from an iPad but when I examined the file data (which I couldn’t do on my iOS device) it turned out they were kind of half sized! Very annoying as I’d deleted the originals from iCloud before I realised- ( trying to free up space- iphone full despite ‘optimising’ being on). I’m going to try and retrieve all my other original photos ( hopefully full sized -who knows?) from iCloud (via iCloud for Windows) and manage them somewhere else that allows you to see normal file data (like size!)and to delete things from your device without losing them everywhere. Optimisation and iCloud Photo Library sounded like a good idea but too opaque for me!
Hi there, I have read thru all of this and still have a question. I’m upgrading my phone and will need to wipe the old one clean of all apps, material etc as I’ll be passing it on to my son. What do I need to do to ensure that I don’t lose all the photos I have taken with my old phone? Will they just come up on my new phone when I sign into iCloud or will they have been deleted when I cleared my old phone?
Hi Coumba,
If you have iCloud Photo Library enabled and the library is fully synched up, you won’t lose anything by wiping the phone. When you log in to your new iPhone with your Apple ID, the photos will sync back.
But in either case, I highly recommend making a backup of your old iPhone before wiping it – either via iCloud or iTunes.
Hi Michael –
When i read you blog, you mentioned that if a photo gets deleted, it also gets deleted to other devices. But since i only have one apple device and that is my iPhone, what happens when i delete a photo on my iPhone regardless if Optimize Storage is on? Will it still keep a copy on iCloud? Or if delete a photo in my phone, it also deletes the one in iCloud Photo Library?
Thanks!
Hi Julian,
I should have said “from all devices and iCloud.com” – in other words, if you delete a photo from your iPhone with iCloud Photo Library enabled, regardless of if you have Optimize Storage selected or not, the photo will also get deleted from iCloud.com. Technically, iOS moves the photo to the Recently Deleted album, from where iCloud permanently removes it 30-40 days later.
If my iCloud storage is full and I want to disable it from my photo library, will my photos delete from my device after the 30 days I have to download them?
Hi Yoselline,
When you disable iCloud Photo Library, iOS will ask you if you want to keep or delete the photos from your device. Simply choose “keep” and you won’t lose any photos.
Hello Michael!
My issue is the following: i`ve upgraded icloud storage and turned on icloud photo library but the photos wouldn`t sync – i don`t see them if i go to icloud.com and my the iphone storage still full (optimize button is on)
Any thought highly appreciated
Hi Elena,
Does the Photos app say “Uploading” or “Synchronizing”? Depending on your internet connection, it may take days to complete.
Michael,
I’m in a very weird position where when I got a new phone (X) only my photo stream and not the previous 8 Year’s of photos from my 7 sync’d. ATT wiped my 7 before I realized the issue. It’s a nightmare. I wonder if it could have had something to do with this new feature. Apple support has no idea what happened, nor can they fix the issue.
So in trying to salvage what I can, I created a manual backup of the new X with one month of photos. Then I restored my phone back to an old backup from 2016, the last time I backed up to a computer manually. At least then I’m losing “only” 2 years of photos. I have set these to sync with iCloud Libeary. My idea was to then again re-wipe my phone, restore to the latest update I made today, and presto changeo, have photos up until 2 years ago through iCloud Library and photos from the last month through my most recent backup.
My only concern and question is, is it possible when I wipe my phone that is currently restored to the 2016 backup, that it will delete those photos from 2010-2016 from iCloud library, and defeat the whole project?
Any advice really appreciated, this has been a total nightmare. Moral of the story: Never rely on iCloud backups.
Wiping your phone does not delete any photos that you have synced with iCloud Photo Library. So if you sync everything up before wiping the phone, you’ll be fine.
Hi Michael,
On my iphone8 I have iCloud Photo Library enabled and optimize iPhone Storage enabled and I also have Upload to My Photo Stream enabled.
If I try to disable Upload to My Photo Stream a message says “Turning off Photo Stream will delete all Photo Stream photos from your iPhone.”
Does that mean I delete all my pictures on my iPhone?
What is the purpose of Photo Stream if iCloud Photo Library stores all photos?
Hi Ted,
I seriously doubt that it’ll delete all photos from your iPhone, only the ones in Photo Stream – see https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht201317 for more information and confirmation of what I said.
Hi Michael…I’ve scrolled though all comments and your excellent answers but still feel confused! Here is my situation: I have close to 10,000 in the iCloud Library. They are all on my PC, iPhone and iPad. If I understand correctly what you have written, there is no way to delete photos with one action on all three devices. To delete photos from all three sites, I will have to do this in two stages: first, I can delete them on my iPad (which will also delete them from my iPhone), and then I will have to go on my PC and do the exact same process on it. Then the photos will be gone on all three sites. Is this correct?
Hi Janet!
I don’t own a PC, so I’m not sure how well Apple has integrated iCloud Photo Library with Windows. But I think, they have an iCloud app for Windows that does provide support for iCloud Photo Library. If so, the app should take care of the synching, unless you copied the photos out of the special sync folder. If so, you’ll have to delete them manually.
Hi MICHAEL, I have iCloud library and myPC and iPad and iPhone are all synched. My question is how do I permanently delete unwanted photos from all three? Do I have to do it intro stages as I asked in my original question?
If all devices are synced via iCloud Photo Library, then you can delete unwanted photos on either device and the deletion gets synched across the board.
Hi. Your article is clearer than anything else I have read, but I’m still struggling. I have a similar problem to Cindy above. My icloud was full so I upgraded to 50gb but it is still full. I use a mac, iphone and 2 ipads. I see that Apple responded to Cindy’s query with, “Cindy you are out of iCloud storage. Photos get deleted permantly when there is no storage left for them to go to. I would recommend backing up your phone and then deleting any old iCloud back ups.” How do I back up only the photos that were taken on the device (not all the photos that have synced from my Mac? I don’t want to lose the photos that have not been going to iCloud during the months I’ve been out of storage, but nor do I want multiple copies of the other photos backed up. Many thanks for your help!!!
If you want to continue using iCloud Photo Library, you have to purchase enough storage space (200GB+). If you don’t want to use iCloud Photo Library (and thus disable sync), disable it and keep all of your photos on your iPhone only. If you don’t have enough space on your iPhone either – you will have to upgrade iCloud for a permanent solution.
Otherwise, you’ll have to connect your iPhone via USB cable to your Mac, and use an app like Image Capture (comes with macOS) to copy photos over.
Thanks very much, Michael.
Hi Michael,
I’m about to get a new iphone and have realised I didn’t have it set up like you’ve said in this thread. Am I right in thinking that if I turn off photo stream, have icloud library on and select optimise iphone storage then my new phone will show all my old photos on icloud and all new ones will be stored in icloud with only minimal storage being used on the phone? (I’m going from 64GB to 32GB phone storage.)
Thanks
Correct
Once again disappointed by Apple. I enabled iCloud Photos on all devices. Used my Mac as the main library. Synced everything to all devices. Deleted a bunch of photos on my Mac. Neither my iPhone nor iPad update to reflect the changes. I even tried signing out of iCloud and signing back in. Why can’t Apple get this right after 10 years of cloud [email protected]$#t
Hi Michael, since I don’t need all my photos on my iphone how can I just keep them on my imac and just delete them from my iphone? Should I disable iCloud Photo Library and delete them from the phone? Will they remain on my imac? Thanks
Hi Theo,
I assume you use your iPhone to take photos. If so, you need to have iCloud Photo Library enabled, because otherwise, they won’t get uploaded in full-resolution to iCloud and thus you won’t have them on your iMac. The only alternative to that is to disable iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone and periodically transfer images to your iMac manually. Then you can delete the transferred photos from your iPhone.
Thanks Michael!
Yeah I know. No genius bar within 100km though :/
Hi, I really hope you can help me, I’m pretty desperate by now: I have a 16GB iPhone (sigh) and after some earlier tips my phone is now full (zero kb available) and I have ‘optimise storage’ turned on. 4000 photos are on my phone as thumbnails (for several hundreds only a cloud is visible, not even a thumbnail) and. 3800 of those photos are also on iCloud (50GB account, half of it left). The most recent 200 are not. When I look on my iPhone in ‘iCloud’ it says ‘Low Disk Space’ -Uploading 200 items’. That number doesn’t change.
When I delete photos on my iPhone, I temporarily go from 0kb to 105MB for example. That 105MB is gone within minutes though, and then my phone is full again. Looks like it uses the renewed open space to download more thumbnails or something? The total amount of space Photos is taking on my iPhone stays approx the same, no matter how many photos I delete on my Phone.
So what I want, is to have thumbnails on my Phone, and the originals on iCloud. The settings are already in such a way this should be the case, right? But apparently it’s not working; Photos takes up 1GB on my Phone.
Also: if I delete photos on my iPhone, they are deleted on iCloud as well. I thought this was NOT supposed to be the case? How can I make it in such a way that they are only deleted on my Phone, and NOT from iCloud as well? I have to fix this, because otherwise I’d have to delete photos from my iPhone to open up space, that I don’t really WANT to delete.. :( (I just want the thumbnails on my phone)
And finally: what happens if I delete a photo from iCloud.com? Will it then disappear from ALL my devices, including my iPhone (that would be fine with me)?
Hi Kristen,
Please carefully read the FAQ at the end of my article. I just updated it with everything I know.
I did, and re-read the whole thing just now. But I don’t see anything in the FAQ that helps. I forgot to specify in my description of the issue what the previous advice I followed actually was: factory settings. Idid that, and that’s how I ended up where I am now: with that 1Gb photos on my phone instead of all thumbnails. And perhaps because I had to download rhumbnails from icloud now, the only place where the original versions still are, this happens now like I described: when I delete a photo on my iphone, its deleted from icloud as well. Which is a disaster. NOT deleting photos from my iphone right now is impossible: if I don’t delete photos, I can’t use my iphone because all actions I perform (like even opening apps) tell me I have 0kb left. Doesn’t work.
Going to factory settings AGAIN won’t help either, since I already did exactly what is described in the faq I should do. And: it would delete the thumbs on my iPhone this time perhaps, which causes photos to delete from Icloud as well.
What am i missing here..???
Hi Kirsten,
Did you restore a backup after completely erasing your phone? If so, then all photos and videos that were not part of iCloud Photo Library (and that are likely the culprit of your problem) got restored. You need to erase your phone without restoring a backup.
No, I didn’t… :/
Then I’d recommend taking your phone to the Apple store / Genius bar. Without having physical access to the phone, it’s difficult the problem after we ruled out the most likely causes.
I did, and re-read the whole thing just now. But I don’t see anything in the FAQ that helps. I forgot to specify in my description of the issue what the previous advice I followed actually was: factory settings. Idid that, and that’s how I ended up where I am now: with that 1Gb photos on my phone instead of all thumbnails. And perhaps because I had to download rhumbnails from icloud now, the only place where the original versions still are, this happens now like I described: when I delete a photo on my iphone, its deleted from icloud as well. Which is a disaster. NOT deleting photos from my iphone right now is impossible: if I don’t delete photos, I can’t use my iphone because all actions I perform (like even opening apps) tell me I have 0kb left. Doesn’t work.
Going to factory settings AGAIN won’t help either, since I already did exactly what is described in the faq I should do. And: it would delete the thumbs on my iPhone this time perhaps, which causes photos to delete from Icloud as well.
What am i missing here..???
Is there a reason to have both iCloud Photo Library and Upliad to My Photo Strean on at sand time?
I recommend turning My Photo Stream off if you use iCloud Photo Library. I see no reason having both enabled unless you have devices that do not support iCloud Photo Library.
I have a similar problem. My pictures and videos all normally uploaded to icloud normally from my iphone and downloaded to my Mac normally but now the videos don’t automatically download where once they did. I have 200 Gb storage in the cloud which has only about 30Gb on it. I don’t have icloud library turned on on my Mac enabled as there is about 800Gb of pictures and videos that I don’t want all this in icloud, . Any thing you can think of?
If I upload my photos from my iOS devise will I lose my album groupings? I appreciate the actual photos are kept?
If you have iCloud Photo Library enabled, then your albums will sync too.
Hello,
All my devices, two iPhone, iPad, MBP and Mac Pro are on my iCloud account and iCloud photo sharing is on. As far as I am aware, when I delete a photo on my Mac Pro, those photos should be deleted on every single one of my devices (or go to the deleted folder).
However this is not the case. I deleted them on Mac Pro and emptied the deleted photos folder and all those deleted photos are available on my photo roll on every other device.
So basically my most recent one is my Mac Pro. Now what should I do? Do you have an idea Why my iCloud Photo Library is not synchronized? What do I do?
Hi Djem,
Enabling iCloud Photo Sharing is not the same as iCloud Photo Library! In other words, enabling iCloud Photo Sharing will not keep your library synchronized across all devices.
iCloud Photo Library: Automatically upload and store your entire library in iCloud to access photos and videos from all your Apple devices or on the web.
iCloud Photo Sharing: Creates albums to share with other people, or subscribe to other people’s shared albums.
Make sure your Mac Pro has indeed iCloud Photo Library enabled.
I have icloud photo library turned on both my ipad and iphone as well as optimize storage on both devices. I have the same number of pictures on the iphone, ipad and Icloud ~1200. However, on my ipad photos are taking up about 1 gig of space. Why??
Hi Tony,
Assuming that is indeed space used by iCloud Photo Library, and not by another app storing photos (i.e. Messages, WhatsApp…), every device (iOS, Mac) manages its own space. If you have plenty of storage space available, the device may keep more photos in their full resolution on the device. So don’t expect that every device uses the same amount of space for iCloud Photo Library.
I’m going to get an upgrade from my iPhone 6 with 64 GB and get an iphone 10 with 256 Gb and I just got a 32 GB iPad 2017 from my mom who never opened it. I have about 17,000 photos and 500 videos in my iCloud Photo Library. Right now my current iPhone 6 is on optimize photos. I don’t want to use that setting with my iphone 10. I want to always back up that new phone to iCloud, including all the photos but I want to keep all originals on the phone and delete some when I need space and also transfer photos I want to keep, and when I need space, to an external hard-drive, via my MacBook. So, will that still work? Where my iphone sill be all backed up on iCloud (i pay for the extra storage), including all the photos I will have in original form on my iphone? I figure this is my best plan, especially since my iPad will have only 32 Gb and my iphone will have 256 Gb. That way each device will hold different photos. Plus, i don’t like the having my photos on the optimize plan becasue it gets too difficult to transfer to hard drives for physical storage. Thoughts?
I have 23k photos and videos in my iCloud Photo Library and it is way over 500 GB in size. So don’t expect your 256 GB iPhone to have sufficient storage to hold all originals.
Hi … if I delete from the icloud photo library ? We’ll it delete from the phone library?
As i want to mange icloud libaray online… not phone memory….
Thanks
iCloud Photo Library, if enabled, keeps everything synchronized, including deletions. So yes, if you delete the image on any device with iCloud Photo Library enabled, it will delete the photo from all other devices as well (that have iCloud Photo Library enabled). If you don’t want that, do not enable iCloud Photo Library :)
Thank u…
But as I wrote I’m deleting from icloud on the web not any mac device….
So we’ll the deleted happen on mac devices too?
What I said also applies to the web app – EVERY (web)app and device with iCloud Photo Library enabled is synchronized.
Thank you for the reply. I take it that means there is no way of recovering photos after they have expired from the ‘recently deleted’?
Unfortunately, you are correct.
I have accidentally deleted a number of photos from my device and had iCloud Photo Library enabled. I have back up’s on iCloud but any time I try and restore to a backup, it updates the photo library to the current time. Is there a way to restore to the camera roll on the backup?
Hi Chris,
The iOS backup does not contain images with iCloud Photo Library enabled, much like it doesn’t contain emails from your email accounts. Your best bet is to restore the images from the “Recently Deleted” album. That’s where iCloud moves deleted photos and videos before trashing them permanently.
Hallo Michael,
ich hoffe, du kannst mir weiterhelfen.
Two days ago I made the huge mistake of trying to transfer the pictures I had saved on my iPhone 7 to my Dell PC without first doing a backup and now all the most recent pictures are gone. They were there when I started transferring them and all of a sudden they disappeared.
I did not make a back up in the cloud.
They are not in the deleted folder in my iphone and when I was transferring them I make the second huge mistake of doing cut/paste. During the transfer I had an error and the phone disconnected.
I feel very stupid because I did not research enough before transferring the pictures. Is there any way I can find them or are they lost forever?
Hi Anna!
That doesn’t sound good, but I would try the following:
– Go to iCloud.com from your browser and confirm that your images are indeed gone. Maybe the deletions haven’t synched up yet (assuming you had iCloud Photo Library enabled)
– On your Dell PC, search for JPEG images and see if the already transferred images are somewhere in a hidden folder.
If those images are truly gone from both devices and you don’t have a backup of either – you may be out of luck.
Good luck!
I have made edits to pictures on my iphone. However, the latest versions aren’t showing on icloud.com. icloud.com shows the latest update as current. Do you have to force pictures to re-download?
Hi Amanda,
If the latest edits are not showing on iCloud.com, chances are, the edits haven’t uploaded from your iPhone yet. I have yet this issue a few times already, where my iPhone decided to re-sync my entire library, which took a few days. I am not aware of any way to force a resync, assuming you already tried to restart your phone and keep it connected to a strong WLAN signal. You can also try to turn iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone off and back on.
I have ~50K photos in iCloud, full versions on Mac, optimized on iPad and iPhone.
I noticed corrupt icons on my iPad (tall rather than wide) and while editing an image resets its icon, that would take too long.
Turning iCloud Photos off should remove all photos, which I could then sync back down. Unfortunately, doing so left 38K of 50K photos on the iPad. It seems it’s because it’s set to optimize (the full library won’t fit on my iPad).
It seems there’s no longer a way to delete all photos within iOS. Apple suggested I delete them manually, but drag-selecting 50K photos would take a long time.
The best solution may be connecting with Image Capture on the Mac via USB. My concern is turning iCloud Photos back on may sync the deletions to the iCloud.
So… if I turn iCloud Photo Library off on my iPad, delete all photos and videos on the iPad, then turn iCloud back on, how will my photos in iCloud be affected? Will they sync back down to my iPad as I’d hope or will it sync up and delete all of my photos?
Thanks
P.S. Another method may be to select-all then delete in each album, then delete whatever remains in the main library view.
Hi Tim!
If you delete photos after having turned iCloud Photo Library off, the deletion should not get synched up once you turn it back on. But to be on the safe side, I would make a copy of the full library on the iMac, which has the originals.
Thank you for the quick response. It’s good to hear it from more than just a support person.
I started down the path of using Image Capture and made some progress, but it’s very slow and it seems to drop connection when the iPad sleeps.
I’m going to try select all in albums to batch delete large subsets, then drag select and delete the remaining in the main library. At least it won’t go to sleep in the middle of the process.
There is a problem with this new Photo method. Case in point. I take a photo with my iPhone. I want to keep the photo but not on my iPhone because I do not have that much memory on my iPhone. I send the photo to myself via email so I can put the photo into an album I had previously created on my iMac where there is plenty of memory left. Now, should I delete the photo on my iPhone it automatically deletes the photo from the album. Is there a way around this forced deletion from my album. In other words keeping the photo on my iMac in its album and still deleting the photo from my iPhone?
Hi Capt. Arty!
You may not have read my article carefully enough – you do not have to delete photos from your iPhone or try to manage storage. iOS does that for you. You just have to let iOS do its job.
Hi Michael,
I have currently set up “Optimise iPhone Storage” while using iCloud Photo Library on my iPhone only.
I want to import all my photos to my Mac with full resolution and original quality (to edit them in some tools by Adobe).
1)
If importing them via USB-Cable connected to my Mac, will then the lower res photo be imported to my Photos App on the Mac? If not, how is this technically done then? Will all the photos be downloaded in original quality to my phone first, and then imported to my computer? I would wonder, if this is done this way, because what would happen, if you dont have enough available space on your iPhone for temporarely store the full res photo on my iPhone?
2)
Would it be better to turn on “iCloud Photo Library” on Mac Photos with the option “Download Originals to this Mac”?
2.1)
Will the files be exactly the same as if directly importing Photos to my Mac with USB-Cable (not using any iCloud Photos with optimization)?
Thanks for your help!
Your answers are all appreciated
Best Regards
Spoogy
Hi Spoogy,
1) I never tried that but for the reasons you already eluded to, I don’t think that will work.
2) Yes, that’s the way to go.
3) Yes.
I am running out of iCloud storage and cannot afford to buy any more storage. Therefore I want to take the photos down from iCloud to an external hard drive and save them exclusively there. In this process, the photos shall be deleted from iCloud and all my Apple devices. Can you please help me in performing this trick?
Hi Matt,
That’s fairly simple. Just export the Photos via the Photos app on your Mac (or use https://www.icloud.com/#photos if you have a PC) and then delete them from iCloud.
Cheers
Michael
Hi Michael,
if Matt does so and assuming he had selected “Optimize Storage” in Photos on Mac, will Photos then export the optimised version that are currently located on his Mac to his external HDD?
Thanks
On iOS, Photos will download the original (full-res) photos first when you try to share them from within the app. I assume Photos on Mac behaves the same way, but I never tried it.
Is there a way to select certain photos to not sync from your computer to your phone? I don’t want to have all of the pictures on my phone and can’t seem to find a workaround.
Nope – you would have to create a separate Library (not an album) using the Photos app on your Mac to store those photos you don’t want in the cloud (and thus on all your other devices).
This is a constant annoyance. One of my devices is out of storage, the only installed apps are ones I need and use every day, and yet it keeps 6gb of pictures and constantly offloads the apps I need! Yes, optimize photos is on, but it doesn’t seem to do much. I can’t take new pictures since it’s out of storage. It should be offloading old photos.
I’m having an issue with storage on my ipad mini. It’s synced with my phone’s photos and now it says I have run out of storage space on my device. I optimized photos yet it did nothing to free up space, I then went to Settings>iCloud>Photos and turned off iCloud photo library. It still didn’t free up any space on my ipad mini. Do you have any other suggestions? I have my photos all backed up through google photos too. Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thank you
Hi Rita,
To see what other apps are consuming storage, go to settings > general > iPhone storage and see what is taking up your storage. Once you know, you can delete what you don’t need anymore.
I am having exactly Rita’s experience – the issue is the photo library on iPad did not get smaller when I turned off iCloud Library – the photo library is using over half the storage on the device – there is nothing else to delete.
Hi Raina,
Why do you expect your library to get smaller when you turn iCloud Photo Library off? Any photos that were downloaded to your iPad would remain on the iPad when you turn iCloud Photo Library off. If you want to remove those images permanently from your iPad, you would have to do that manually.
It said it was deleting things when I turned it off.
Hi,
I am an idiot or retarded when it comes to this stuff. I read what you wrote but I am still so confused, I have no photos on my phone or in my iCloud to photo stream and yet it says I have 800 mb.
Hi Tim,
What exactly does settings > general > iPhone storage show? On mine, it mentions large attachments (photos, videos…) that I may have in iMessage.
Hi since i recently want to save up space on my iphone i brought the extra icloud 50GB storage. now i cant understand how will that save space on my phone? like what do i have to to get the extra space in my device memory. currently m backing up again on icloud and dont know what will happen after that?
i need to understand how this works…ur help will be highly appreciated..thanks!
Buying more iCloud space doesn’t necessarily free up any on-device space, with the exception of photos and videos, if you enable iCloud Photo Library and “optimize iCloud storage” in the settings of your phone. With both enabled, iOS will remove photos and videos from your device and store them in iCloud if you run low on space.
To see what other apps are consuming storage, go to settings > general > iPhone storage and see what is taking up your storage. Once you know, you can delete what you don’t need anymore
I just ran into this problem myself, mistakenly thinking that Icloud Photo Library was used more for storage than syncing. I wanted a place where I could upload photos from both my phone, my husband’s phone and my mac, then organized them. I also planned to delete photos on my phone and free up space, which I now understand won’t work. So as a work-around, my understanding is that I can disable icloud photo library from my phone and just connect it to my mac and upload the old way, then those photos will automatically sync with the cloud library. Is that right? Are there other down sides besides having to upload manually? Thanks.
I would leave iCloud Photo Library enabled on your iOS devices because iOS manages the storage. You can still manually upload photos from other iCloud users into your library from a Mac or Windows PC.
But I cannot delete photos on my phone, correct? I also have amazon unlimited photos, would that be better? Thanks.
Correct, but you don’t really have to as they don’t consume space on your iPhone. Considering that you already have multiple Apple devices, I think iCloud is your best bet.
I’m with Kathleen. I would rather download manually and delete photos/videos from my phone. I just bought a iPhone X and everything seems different. I want to download my photos/videos to the Photos app. Can’t do that anymore. Don’t like that. Don’t like that if I delete something from my phone it will automatically delete from iCloud Photo Library as well. What is the use of that. You should be able to download the old way and not go into iCloud Photo Library. I don’t need to keep 6,000 photo and hundreds of videos on my photo just because I’m afraid if I delete them they will get deleted from where I save them. Didn’t have to worry about that in the Photos app.
Kim,
Your requirements have a very simple solution: Disable iCloud Photo Library on your phone and Mac and you can continue doing it the old way. Nobody prevents you from doing that :)
Of course, you won’t get the benefits of the automatic synchronization, but apparently, you don’t want that anyway.
Michael, if I were to disable iCloud Photo Library prior to downloading my photos onto a flash drive, would I be left with full resolution versions of my photos? Or thumbnail versions?
Hi Michael,
If I remember correctly, at least iOS asks you when you try to disable iCloud Photo Library, if you want to download all photos first. On macOS, I don’t recall if that is the case too. If you say no, or if macOS doesn’t ask you, you may not have the full-res versions of all your photos. So I’d recommend completely synching the library first to ensure all full-res images have been downloaded.
My Iphone6 is completely out of storage because I wasn’t aware Icloud would synch ALL my photos on my Mac to the cloud AND my phone. I thought somehow I could turn this feature on and off. I am now at overload and can barely use my phone, nor even update it. I bought a passport with 1 TB storage. Can I export all my photos from my phone to the external drive and then delete from my phone and still keep my photos on my Mac and in Icloud? I’m beginning to hate apple products!
Hi Becky,
I think you may have misunderstood my article. If you set your iPhone to “optimize storage”, iOS will NOT download all your photos and use up all available storage. Just because you see thumbnails of your images in the Photos app doesn’t mean those photos are downloaded. And no, you cannot export all photos, delete them from your phone and expect them to still be in iCloud. To not do that was the whole point of my blog post :)
I am having similar issue on iPad – I turned on iCloud library from my iMac and now the “optimized” versions are now taking 13gb of space on my iPad, my iPad is full and I can’t do anything. There is nothing to free up except apps I regularly use – I wish you could say “only store X GB of photos on device” or something. It really doesn’t work as advertised and is frustrating me and my kids that can’t use their apps.
Hi Raina,
Are you sure that space is occupied by images from your library and not from images of other apps? If those images are indeed from your library, then there is maybe something else wrong. I’d suggest turning iCloud Photo Library off, removing all remaining images and then turning it back on, so it can re-sync using the Optimized setting.
Yes the photos app is taking up 13gb – it had been much smaller before I turned on iCloud library. I did turn off iCloud library and it said it was deleting 60k+ photos which I let it do but it seems to have left stubs behind for all this photos and videos that are still taking up the same space as the size used by the app has not gotten smaller. Is there a way to delete the photos without also deleting from photo stream and also not having to do one at a time?
Maybe that is because My Photo Stream is still turned on, which would hold duplicates of all photos and videos.
Question: how do I add older photos to my iCloud? The photos are on a cd. I’d like to get them into my iCloud library and somehow categorize them according to the DATE they were taken.
Most of the photos I take are on my iPhone and automatically saved to iCloud, however I don’t know how to import older photos from a cd Into My iCloud storage. It’s a Dell not a Mac. Thank you
You have to download the iCloud app for Windows (see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201391) and then copy your photos over to the appropriate folder inside the iCloud folder.
Cek your email please
I have photos on my IPhone 7, my mini iPad and on my pc with windows 10. All are connected to the I-Cloud. I have over 29,000 photos including many duplicates. When I have attempted to delete them, I.e I have manually eliminated thousands either via my Apple device or my PC, they eventually come back.they keep coming back. I have been told to eliminate them on my PC and some how Block my I-cloud photo library on my PC. Any help or ideas would be appreciated
Hi Dan, assuming all of your devices have not only iCloud but also iCloud Photo Library enabled, disable it on all devices and reboot them. Then re-enable it on each device. Before you do that, you can also try to delete some photos on iCloud.com and see if they return too.
Why when i try to delete my photos there appeared “this photos will be deleted immediately”,but i want my photos in recently deleted not deleted permanently? Please help me
Cindy: With iCloud Photo Library enabled, when you delete a photo from your library, you should get the following message: “This photo will be deleted from iCloud Photo Library on all your devices.” If you click on “Delete Photo” then, the photo will be moved to your “Recently Deleted” album.
But the photos dont moved in my recently deleted, it deleted permanently. What must i do to keep my photos in recently deleted?:(
There is no setting to enable this. My guess is you are not using iCloud Photo Library. So check if it is enabled under Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Photos > iCloud Photo Library.
I check in setting and i already use icloud photo library, so what i do now? Thankyou for always answer me
Hi Cindy,
I have never seen this issue before and don’t know what could be causing it. If you require on-device troubleshooting, I’d recommend going to an Apple Store. Alternatively, I also offer paid troubleshooting services. If you want to explore that option, please send me an email to [email protected].
Cheers
Michael
Cindy you are out of iCloud storage. Photos get deleted permantly when there is no storage left for them to go to. I would recommend backing up your phone and then deleting any old iCloud back ups. Or check with the Apple store if you aren’t sure how to do this yourself.
Can you teach me how to delete the old backup without affecting all the data and photo on the current iphone?? I just wanted to clear my i cloud eithout affecting my devices and the backup again. How can i do that??
Hi Razieq,
You can delete old iCloud backups under Settings > {ACCOUNT} > iCloud > Manage Storage > Backups. Deleting backups from there won’t remove any data from your phone.
if i disable my icloud will it delete lhotos in my iphone as well ? i really need help ASAP
Hi Natasha,
Maybe – If you currently have iCloud Photo Library enabled, go to Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Photos and see if “Optimize iPhone Storage” or “Download and Keep Originals” is selected. In case of the latter, just make sure your photo library is fully updated and synched before disabling iCloud so you won’t lose any pictures. If “Optimize iCloud Storage” is selected, disabling iCloud will remove all photos that are not downloaded to your phone. Note that just because photos are removed from your phone, doesn’t mean you will permanently lose them – they are still in iCloud Photo Library, which you can access via iCloud.com from a browser on Windows/Mac.
If you haven’t used iCloud Photo Library at all, then disabling iCloud won’t delete any photos.
A little more than a week ago, I turned on the Optimize Storage in the iphone 6S because I have so many photos. Much to my dismay, several (on the order of hundreds) of my photos are now missing from my device AND my icloud. I did not delete them nor can they be found in the recently deleted file. I am totally freaking out. One trend I have noticed is most of the missing photos were taking one of the iphone camera filters (e.g., b&w). If anyone has the same issue and knows how, IF possible, to fix it, I would be most grateful for the help.
Great comments!! I recently upgraded to the iPhoto Cloud Library. My main iPhoto library was over 100gb. It resides in my iMac. It took over a week for it to complete the upload. It went really well, no glitches. Before doing the upload, I made two separate backups and also a time machine back up. After checking that it all went well, I then upgraded my MacBook Pro, followed by my iOS devices. Flawless!! Needless to say, I had to buy extra iCloud storage space, but it is worth doing so. The memories stored in this pictures are priceless.