iCloud question

[kali89]

hi,

I despererately need to liberate storage space in my iPhone..
yesterday I browsed in my iCloud drive, saw all photos I have in my phone are there, in the cloud (I needed to make sure, I never browse in there..) I need to delete A LOT of them (a few weeks ago I deleted about 800 photos, and no space was liberated, I don't know why..)

I usu. don't care whether photos I have deleted are in my iCloud or
not, since I deleted them ;~)
but now I need to delete them out of necessity (have about 10,000
photos, I want to delete about half..)

so, my QUESTION: will the PHOTOS I DELETE still be there, in the iCloud, afterwards?

I can't even look at my iCloud at home, since I can't get to it on
either my phone or on my very old MBP (even this forum website doesn't work on my computer, a lot of websites don't work in my computer now..)
I viewed my iCloud on a public computer at an internet cafe yesterday..
(I purchased a new MBP already (yay!!) but for reasons I don't want to bore you with I won't get it till a few weeks from now..)

I can't get to my iCloud on my iPhone either.. can't upgrade any apps or anything.. disaster..

again, my main question:
WILL PHOTOS I DELETE STILL BE THERE IN MY iCLOUD AFTERWARDS..

thank you very much...

 

[MacInWin]

I need to delete A LOT of them (a few weeks ago I deleted about 800 photos, and no space was liberated, I don't know why..)

Deleted photo go into the trash can for 30 days, just in case you change your mind. Did you empty the trash? (On the phone, open Photos, then Albums and scroll down to the bottom of all the albums to "Recent Deleted" which is the album deleted photos sit in for that 30 days. Delete them from there and they are gone, instantly.)

 

[kali89]

yes of course I always empty the trash...

I need to know about my iCloud question...

thank you..

 

[lclev]

yes of course I always empty the trash...

I need to know about my iCloud question...

thank you..

If you delete photos on your iPhone then they are gone from your iPhone and now go into your iCloud trash for 30 days UNLESS you log into iCloud and delete them from your iCloud trash.

Does that explain it?

Lisa

 

[MacInWin]

I despererately need to liberate storage space in my iPhone..

You said it was space on the iPhone. As I said, deleting images on the iPhone just move them for 30 days to the "Recently Deleted" folder. That's why deleting 800 didn't recovery any space. They have not been erased yet. Hence, my suggestion.

Lisa gave you the iCloud answer, but again, to get space on the phone after deleting them on iCloud, you would have to either wait the 30 days or go to the "Recently Deleted" folder and delete them from there.

 

[kali89]

again:
1) I always empty the trash in the phone after deleting photos
2) I need to remove photos FROM THE PHONE (I'm running out of space on the phone, not iCloud.. in iCloud I already looked, am using 36 of 50 GB..)

but I guess I got my question answered.. if I remove photos in iPhone they disappear from iCloud in 30 days, yes? :-(

so I guess there's no way to somehow tell iCloud to not remove THESE PARTICULAR PHOTOS I'M DELETING NOW... ;~)
oh well..

thank you...

 

[MacInWin]

Just to be sure, again, it's not really called "Trash" but "Recently Deleted," so to get rid of them immediately you would need to delete them from the "Recently Deleted" album, on the iPhone. I'll repeat, on the iPhone. You will immediately recover the space on the iPhone doing that. That deletions will also quickly be synced to iCloud and they will disappear from there as well.

But you also asked about iCloud. As Lisa said, if you delete from the iPhone and it's syncing to iCloud, the images will also delete from iCloud. Re-reading your initial post, I couldn't tell if that is what you want, or what you want to avoid, so tell us what you want at the end and the advice will get better, I think.

If you want to keep them in iCloud but not on the phone you can continue reading, otherwise you can stop here.

To keep them from being deleted in the cloud, disable cloud sync before deleting them from the "Recently Deleted" album. That way the change is only on the phone, not synced to the cloud. However, doing that also means any new pictures you take won't be synced to the cloud, either, so you need to decide what is more important to you. If you have already deleted and they are already in the "Recently Deleted" on iCloud, turn off sync, then in the iCloud version of Photos go to "Recently Deleted" folder, select all images, then click on "Recover" and all of them will be put back in the main library. That recovery won't sync to the iPhone because you turned that off.

One other option is to remove the images from Photos in iCloud but if you still want them somewhere, keep the image files somewhere out of the app. If you had a Mac that worked with Photos, it would be relatively easy. But it still can be done. Go to iCloud.com and log in. Open Photos. Find the "Recently Deleted" folder and verify that the images you deleted on the iPhone are there. Select them all, then click on Recover to take them out of the Recently Deleted album. Find them again in the main library and select all of them to put into some new folder for ease of working with them. Go to that new folder, select all of them, then click on the cloud icon with the down arrow on the top bar. Here is a shot of the menu bar showing the icon as the fifth from the left.


Doing that will open a dialog box which will show that there is a zip file to be downloaded and for you to verify where you want that file to be saved. Once you have the location you want, click the "Save" button and the download will start. For 800 images, you might have to break it up into parts or the download will be very, very large. You mentioned that your Mac is old, and that you used a computer at an internet cafe. You can do this there and save the zip file(s) to a USB thumb drive that is large enough to hold the files. Anyway, once you have the image zip file(s) downloaded, you can delete the images again in iCloud Photos to put them into the "Recently Deleted" album and then select all and delete them from "Recently Deleted." That deletion will replicate to the phone fairly quickly.

 

[kali89]

oh my gosh.. thank you for all those options!!
keeping the photos IN THE iCLOUD but NOT ON THE PHONE is exactly what I want..

so next time I'm at an internet café or something I will look into this..
(I have no other option, I can't BROWSE my iCloud on either my phone or MBP (my 12-year-old MPB.. I purchased it 12 years ago next month.. it actually still works fine, it's just that I can't upgrade anything so most websites don't work, my email client doesn't work anymore, etc... I just can't upgrade anything anymore..))

again.. thank you very much...

(PS: the reason I'm in this predicament to begin with is that my old MPB won't read my iPhone when I connect it to the MBP via USB, so I can't transfer the photos to the MBP..)

 

[kali89]

"That way the change is only on the phone, not synced to the cloud. However, doing that also means any new pictures you take won't be synced to the cloud, either, so you need to decide what is more important to you."

but it doesn't matter that it's not synched ALL THE TIME.. if when I do a backup it all gets backed up, is this right?

You know, like I have it with my external HD for my MBP.. files are not synched, but everything gets backed up when I do a backup.. I can live with that until I get my new MBP...

does this make sense?

and you say AN ALTERNATIVE to this is just deleting them from iPhone, THEN go to RECENTLY DELETED dir in iCloud and "recover" them, yes?
(& synching has to be turned off for this option too, yes?)

I'm doing it tomorrow morning.. wish me luck..
and again, thank you very much for your help....

 

[MacInWin]

but it doesn't matter that it's not synched ALL THE TIME.. if when I do a backup it all gets backed up, is this right?

Backup and sync are two different things. In fact, synced photos are NOT backed up to the cloud when you do a backup of the iPhone to the cloud. So, if you turn off the sync on the phone, then do a backup, the new images SHOULD be backed up. But that does not mean they show up in the Photos app in the Cloud. They will be stored in the backup. Only synced images show up in Photos in the Cloud.

and you say AN ALTERNATIVE to this is just deleting them from iPhone, THEN go to RECENTLY DELETED dir in iCloud and "recover" them, yes?
(& synching has to be turned off for this option too, yes?)

No. What I meant was that if you have already deleted images on the phone that you want to keep in the cloud, that if you turn off sync for Photos, you should be able then to go to Photos in the cloud, look at "Recently Deleted" and restore them to the cloud version of Photos at that time. With sync off, they won't sync back to the phone. Then, after you have sync OFF and the photos recovered in the cloud, you can safely delete them from "Recently Deleted" on the phone and recover that space immediately. The order of events is important. if you do the recovery in the cloud with sync ON, it will replicate to the phone, recovering them there as well. If you can't recover them in the cloud, but they are still on the phone, recover them there, turn sync on, let it sync to put them in the cloud, then turn sync OFF and delete them from the phone. You want to be careful as you do this because if they get deleted both in the phone and cloud, they are gone. Remember, synced images are NOT backed up, so a backup won't get them back, either.

 

[kali89]

I'm in internet café.. when unsynching photos it says it will remove all photos from my iPhone.. why?

so I want to just UNSYNCH photos, and it wants to right away REMOVE ALL PHOTOS FROM PHONE? WHY?
(I want to remove about half..)

thank you..

 

[kali89]

so once I unsynch photos the two options are DOWNLOAD ALL PHOTOS TO MY PHONE (??) OR

REMOVE ALL PHOTOS FROM MY PHONE?

I don't get this.. thank you..

 

[MacInWin]

You've not said how much storage your phone has, or how much it says your photos are taking. But, at some point, you started to run out of storage, so the Phone started to unload memory by moving the images to the Cloud, then replacing them on the Phone with a reference to the cloud location, saving space on the phone. That is what "Optimize iPhone Storage," which is checked, does. Now, when you are indicating you want to stop the sync process, it's telling you that if you do that, the links on the phone will stop working and the photos will, effectively, be deleted from the phone. So, it is offering to you that before you do that, you can download all of those linked photos to the Phone. If you have space for them, you can do that, then delete on the Phone the ones you don't want there, then delete them again from Recently Deleted and recover that storage. The images will still be in the cloud because you have turned off sync.

Or, you can go ahead and let them be deleted on the phone, recover the storage, then use the download process from iCloud to get all of the images as a zip file, as I described earlier, then select the images you DO want on the iPhone and put them there. That will be a painful process because the only way I can think to get them to the iPhone with your old Mac is to email them and then open the email on the phone and save them to Photos on the phone, a few at a time.

I've asked Ian, (IWT) to chime in here. He's the go-to for most things to do with photos.

 

[IWT]

Give me an hour or so - certain things I must do - then I'll post back & do my best.

This doesn't in any way stop anyone else from solving the OP's difficulties.

Ian

 

[IWT]

In my response to you, please don’t be offended if I comment on misunderstandings.

Here is where we are.

1. Your iPhone is close to full.
2. You want to offload your 800 photos - well not actually, as it turns out later; what you really want is to choose which of the 800 to delete - and even delete is not the right word. You want to retain all of them, but not necessarily on the iPhone. Just reduce the number on the iPhone to free up space. You also mention that you have 10,000 photos - where? On your iPhone or elsewhere eg your Mac? If on your Mac, again where?
3. In your earliest posts. You seem to confuse iCloud Drive with iCloud. Not the same.
4. You are confusing Sync = synchronisation = having the same data on all your devices - change on one, change reflected on all. Sync is a two-way system - WITH Backup, which = a permanent copy of what you have on one or more devices stored elsewhere - which could mean an External Hard Drive (EHD) or, yes, iCloud. But not the same as iCloud sync.
5. You have a problem with WiFi such that access to your Apple ID and iCloud requires a visit to an Internet cafe. And yet, you can access the Internet, in other matters, from your Mac at home?
6. Your Mac is "old". OK, which Operating System (OS) does it run? This is important because later on, I’m going to ask you to transfer your iPhone’s photos to the Photos app on the Mac. Or is it still iPhotos app??

There is a solution. The solution requires that you use Mac’s Photos app/iPhotos app to store all your pictures/videos.

And that within the Photos app/iPhotos app, you select "iCloud Photos" as your BACKUP.

So let’s start from the beginning.

1. On your iPhone, go into Settings > Photos and turn OFF iCloud Photos and turn ON "My Photo Stream". Turning iCloud OFF means that what’s on your iPhone remains there and doesn’t SYNC with iCloud or any other Mac device you may have. SYNC in this case is not a backup, it’s SYNC as described above. The other settings are your personal choice such as "View Full HDR" and transfer to Mac, "Automatic" or "Keep Originals". I suggest the latter.
2. If you can, given the age of your Mac, attach your iPhone to the Mac via USB cable.
3. Open Photos app/iPhotos app, select the iPhone by clicking on it on the left.
4. Then, top right choose "Import All". This could take some time.
5. When finished, use the keyboard Command plus comma to enter "Preferences". Now choose "General" and make sure "Copy items to the library" is ticked.
6. Now click on "iCloud" and tick "iCloud Photos" and underneath, "Download originals to this Mac". These last two (5 & 6) insure that your pictures are backed up to iCloud (NOT synced as defined previously) and are recoverable from same.

If you have followed me so far, the pics/videos are on your iPhone and are no longer synced to iCloud but will be backed up to the iCloud.

As I don’t know which iPhone you have nor the Operating System (OS) on your Mac, it may be that attaching the iPhone to the Mac and opening Photos app/iPhotos app is not possible. Unlikely, but….. in which case, after attachment, go into Applications > Image Capture app. Open it and see if your iPhone is recognised. If so, click on it. Then on the right, click to highlight the first pic, then use Command plus A to select ALL. Now down below, under "Import" choose Photos app/iPhotos and choose "Download All".

That’s just the start - sorry. We may need to look at system preferences? And get you to log in to your Apple ID on the Internet. So much to do; apologies.

Also, please re-read Jake’s posts #10 and 13

Please get back to us. You need to provide answers as well as progress. Eg where are the 10,000 photos?? I mentioned this at the start.

Ian

 

[kali89]

thank you v

Give me an hour or so - certain things I must do - then I'll post back & do my best.

This doesn't in any way stop anyone else from solving the OP's difficulties.

Ian

thank you very much, Ian!!
I do very much appreciate everyone's help..

 

[kali89]

Your Mac is "old". OK, which Operating System (OS) does it run? This is important because later on, I’m going to ask you to transfer your iPhone’s photos to the Photos app on the Mac. Or is it still iPhotos app??

I CAN'T TRANSFER PHOTOS TO MY MAC... the mac is too old, and IT DOESN'T READ THE PHONE WHEN I PLUG IT INTO THE MAC...
this is the whole reason why I'm in this predicament..

otherwise I would have just transferred all the photos to the MBP and be done with it...

(I'm on 10.6.8, by the way.. there are no more free upgrades.. haven't upgraded anything in a while..)

 

[kali89]

You also mention that you have 10,000 photos - where? On your iPhone or elsewhere eg your Mac? If on your Mac, again where?

I have about 10,000 photos ON MY PHONE.. I would like delete about half of them, to liberate storage space on my phone...

so: I want to delete about 5,000 photos FROM THE PHONE, but I want THE PHOTOS I DELETE FROM THE PHONE TO **REMAIN IN iCLOUD**....

this is the gist of what I want...

and again, thank you very much for your help...

 

[kali89]

You also mention that you have 10,000 photos - where? On your iPhone or elsewhere eg your Mac? If on your Mac, again where?

I have about 10,000 photos ON MY PHONE.. I would like delete about half of them, to liberate storage space on my phone...

so: I want to delete about 5,000 photos FROM THE PHONE, but I want THE PHOTOS I DELETE FROM THE PHONE TO **REMAIN IN iCLOUD**........

this is the gist of what I want...

thank you very much for your help...

You have a problem with WiFi such that access to your Apple ID and iCloud requires a visit to an Internet cafe. And yet, you can access the Internet, in other matters, from your Mac at home?

I live in a rural area.. there's no broadband, unfortunately...

but quite apart from that, the reason I can't BROWSE my iCloud drive (i.e., BROWSE CONTENT) in my iCloud is that that feature won't work in my mac... any website now that's secure (bank, e-commerce) DOES NOT WORK ON MY MBP ANYMORE.. browser is TOO OLD, and I CAN'T UPGRADE IT...
(for example I can't get to apple.com AT ALL, I put in my uid/pswd and the screen just stays there... it doesn't go anywhere.. and on and on.. it's like that with many websites now..)

 

[kali89]

sorry one of my responses appears twice..
I had to press POST REPLY button a no. of times till it went through (again, lousy internet connection), and I can't delete one of them... (when I press "more options" under the post nothing happens... everything works like halfway for me now... ;-)