Deleted iCoud Photos Not Deleting From Device

[jools1976]

Hello. I have an iPhone 11 (256GB) that is filled up with pictures to about 250GB. I want to pull off the pictures and back them up to an external drive. I first tried using a Windows 10 laptop which I connected the phone to with a Lightning cable, but when I went to import with the Photos app it just kept giving me an message saying "an error occurred". The phone has 200GB of iCloud storage, which obviously isn't enough to store all the pictures. So I went to iCloud.com and downloaded 100GB of pictures from there and stored them externally. I then deleted the pictures from iCloud, thinking the phone would sync and delete them from there as well, freeing up space. The problem is, I now have 100GB of free space in my iCloud, but nothing is coming off the phone. I've left it for 24 hours, no change. If I go to my iCloud settings on the phone, it shows the free space. If I go to Settings --> General --> iPhone Storage, iCloud Photos just says "updating", and has been stuck like that since yesterday. Last night before I went to bed it said "5%", but didn't move overnight, then changed to "updating" in the morning. Does anybody have any ideas why it won't sync? If I left anything out let me know. Thanks.

 

[MacInWin]

It is syncing. It's just very slow. Photos sync operates at a very low priority, basically after everything else, including phone operations. I've seen it take days, even weeks, to finish a large update.

Patience is needed.

 

[jools1976]

Weeks? That seems extreme...

 

[MacInWin]

Weeks? That seems extreme...

Depends on how many you are touching. 3-4, easy, done in seconds or minutes. But 10,000? That low priority kicks in and pushes the operation out of the way, so that could easily take days and weeks.

 

[jools1976]

Hm, ok. I'll keep my eye on it and see how it goes. Should I not at least be seeing some progress as far as free space, or will it just update all at once?

 

[MacInWin]

My experience is that it's all at once. Been a while since I did a big purge, though, so I could be remembering it wrong.

 

[jools1976]

Ok. I'll keep this thread posted as it progresses. Thanks for the replies.

 

[jools1976]

So yesterday I downloaded 11,000 photos from iCloud to an external drive, and then deleted them from iCloud. I got a message saying that the would be deleted from all of my devices (I had to do it in 1,000 picture blocks because of the way iCloud is set up) which is exactly what I wanted. I then left the phone to sync, and it got to about 30% in 5 hours, before I left it alone for the night. This morning a woke up and it said it was completed, and it freed up about 60GB on my phone. Here's the weird part(s). My phone is still saying, and I can see, the 11K pictures on the device. When I logged back in to iCloud on a computer, all 11K pictures were back in there. I downloaded and deleted them again, and so far 1900 have come back. What is going on? I'm seriously confused...

 

[MacInWin]

From your original post:

I first tried using a Windows 10 laptop which I connected the phone to with a Lightning cable, but when I went to import with the Photos app it just kept giving me an message saying "an error occurred".

I had not bothered with that statement as the issue wasn't "where" but "when" the sync would happen. I don't know enough about how Photos and iCloud for Windows works to be able to tell you what is going on. In the Mac world, once deleted on one synced device, the images are eventually deleted from all the synced devices. I would imagine it should happen the same way on Windows, and from the articles at Apple, it appears it should happen the same way, but I don't have any Windows devices to test with to see for myself.

Here is Apple's article on Photos on Windows: Set up and use iCloud Photos on your Windows PC

Might be something there to help.

And maybe someone who knows more will come along to help. The only thought I have is that maybe there is another device also synced to the same account that is reloading the pictures? All you have mentioned are the iPhone and PC.

Ian is the most knowledgable user of Photos here, maybe he can chime in...

 

[IWT]

Ian is the most knowledgable user of Photos here, maybe he can chime in...

Give me a few minutes to read through all the posts - and then I'll do my best.

Ian

 

[IWT]

Okay. Let me start here: you have an iPhone, but no mention of any other Mac device - computer, iPad, iPod touch? This is important to know because another Mac device, if linked to your iCloud account, could explain some of your troubles. You do have a Windows computer however.

And you do have an iCloud account with 200GB storage = £2.49/month or equivalent.

You said: "I have an iPhone 11 (256GB) that is filled up with pictures to about 250GB." That leaves very little room for any kind of manoeuvre.

I've read your subsequent posts and won't bore you with quotations.

This is what I suggest. On your iPhone, go into Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Photos and turn OFF iCloud Photos and My Photo Stream.

And as a confirmation of this, go into Settings > Photos and turn off iCloud Photos and My Photo Stream if not already turned off by above actions.

This disengages you from iCloud. Your iPhone is now stand-alone.

Next: sign in to iCloud on your Windows PC as you did previously. Seek out the 11K of photographs and download them to your Windows PC or to an External Hard Drive (EHD) - I apologise for not knowing much about Windows, but as you've downloaded the pics previously - in 1000 picture blocks/100GB, do that again - unless you are certain that those 11K photographs are definitely on your EHD. No need to repeat that if they are on your EHD for sure.

Then we can proceed.

Your iPhone is isolated from iCloud (as above). We now have to delete all your photographs from the iPhone. Theoretically, if you do NOT have any other device linked to your iCloud account, you could delete all 11K pics from iCloud and then try to to sync iPhone with iCloud; but I don't recommend that route. Even if that worked, your iPhone with little to no extra storage space, would take ages and ages to delete those pictures.

Here are better options:

Firstly, you could use your Windows PC to do the job by connecting your iPhone to the PC via USB. And then:

Once connected, navigate to your iPhone's DCIM photo folder within Windows Explorer and select your photos you wish to delete, or Ctrl + A to select all. Now delete them by right-clicking or Shift + Del to permanently delete them from your iPhone. Takes a long time but much, much quicker than the sync method.

This is taken from: Want to quickly delete photos from your iPhone? Here's how!

That should work - but if not:

Another option - not so wild as you might think - find anyone with a Mac computer. Permissions and ownership doesn't matter in this case. Connect your iPhone to the Mac via USB. Open Finder > Applications > Image Capture app.

You will see your iPhone name on the left. Click on that. On your right, all 11K photographs should appear. Click on the first one to highlight it. Then use Command plus A to select them all. Then Right Click on a photo. You are given two choices: Import all or Delete All. Choose Delete. It will take a couple of hors at least.

That's the best I can come up with at short notice. Please, please do let us now how you get on.

Good luck.

Ian

 

[jools1976]

Thanks for the response, a lot of good info there. So my immediate though as well was that another device was repopulating iCloud. There is another phone, but iCloud photos is turned off on it, also, I've removed the ~11K photos from iCloud twice now (I did it again today) and I can confirm I saw photos that were removed the first time. So they're definitely coming from the same device. It's got 70GB free now (not sure what's happened), so there's room to maneuver, but it's saying it's up to date, and the 11K pics are still on the phone. I just don't understand why it putting them back into iCloud...

 

[IWT]

putting them back into iCloud..

I can only suspect that an Apple product such as the other iPhone is still "connected" to iCloud. iCloud itself cannot replace or create photographs by itself.

Please check, and check again that ANY/ALL Apple devices are disconnected from iCloud with respect to Photos app. And that may apply to Windows PC if there is any backup to iCloud - as you can imagine, I'm ignorant of Windows PC as it's 20+ years since I used one.

BTW, may I assume that you have shut down iCloud syncing with your iPhone with the 11K photographs as I suggested? You could, temporarily close down ALL connection between your iPhone and iCloud.

And, finally, did you, or have you started the deletion of the iPhones photographs by using the Windows or Apple Mac approaches I discussed previously?

Ian