iCloud question

[MacInWin]

We're trying to help. Shouting isn't really needed. I asked Ian to join in because he is the "expert" here on all things pictures and iCloud.

Does your Mac have iPhotos? Are you using it? If not, there may be a workable solution for you if you use the Internet Cafe to download the images from iCloud to a USB drive, then extract them on the Mac and import them to iPhotos. Then, once you know you have a safe copy there, just delete the ones you want to delete on the iPhone. You won't care if the deletions sync to iCloud because you'll have all of the photos in iPhotos in the Mac. And you won't be faced with the questions you got when you tried to turn off sync for Photos about deleting all on the iPhone. New pictures will still sync to iCloud, you can then repeat the download to USB and import to iPhotos for the ones you want to preserve.

Eventually, if you get a new Mac, the new Photos app will convert all of the iPhotos libraries to work with Photos and your iPhone should be able to connect to the new Mac.

 

[Rod]

Hi kali89, when you get your new computer up and running get back to us again on this topic. We should be able to suggest a few other options and solutions to ensure you can keep your photo collection intact, more manageable and reduce the number of photos on your iPhone.

 

[IWT]

Jake gave you the answer for now and Rod seconded it, so to speak.

I'm afraid my contribution was unhelpful. I had no knowledge that your Mac was still running Snow Leopard and I still don't know which model of iPhone you have, its storage capacity, nor what its present iOS is.

Anyhow, I make no excuse for my lack of support. Far more importantly, you now have a temporary strategy to see you through till you get your next Mac.

Ian

 

[kali89]

We're trying to help. Shouting isn't really needed. I asked Ian to join in because he is the "expert" here on all things pictures and iCloud.

Does your Mac have iPhotos? Are you using it? If not, there may be a workable solution for you if you use the Internet Cafe to download the images from iCloud to a USB drive, then extract them on the Mac and import them to iPhotos. Then, once you know you have a safe copy there, just delete the ones you want to delete on the iPhone. You won't care if the deletions sync to iCloud because you'll have all of the photos in iPhotos in the Mac. And you won't be faced with the questions you got when you tried to turn off sync for Photos about deleting all on the iPhone. New pictures will still sync to iCloud, you can then repeat the download to USB and import to iPhotos for the ones you want to preserve.

Eventually, if you get a new Mac, the new Photos app will convert all of the iPhotos libraries to work with Photos and your iPhone should be able to connect to the new Mac.

shouting? oh no.... I use all caps for emphasis... I'm a web developer (retired), and have been getting help online for many years on a lot of things.. I would never shout or get disrepectful with people who are helping me... on the contrary, I'm always very grateful for any help I get online from people like you...
I'm sorry about it..

 

[kali89]

there may be a workable solution for you if you use the Internet Cafe

I have tried internet café.. they all have windows machines... they don't read iPhones at all...

 

[MacInWin]

Well, all caps is normally interpreted as "shouting" so you might want to reconsider that.

It doesn't matter what the OS of the Internet cafe is. You can get to iCloud. com, select all the photos and download the resulting zip file to a usb thumb drive on any machine with any browser. Then take that USB thumb drive to your Mac and copy the zip, then unzip it and import the files to iPhotos. Get a large USB stick, the zip will be large for 10,000 images. I'd format the USB thumb drive as exFAT to be compatible with both Windows and Mac.

The whole idea is to get the images to a safe place where the deletion from the iPhone won't get to them. Then you can delete all you want on the iPhone and even if they get deleted in iCloud, you'll still have them saved in iPhotos, or wherever you put them.

 

[kali89]

omg... I just connected the phone to my old MBP and opened ImageCapture... and you can see the photos! (even though I get an alert saying the mac can't detect the device (???))

however: even though I have over 10,000 photos in the iPhone, ImageCapture shows only 22 photos.... (see attached s'shot..)
it even says "22 items" in the sidebar in the left..

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

 

[kali89]

It doesn't matter what the OS of the Internet cafe is. You can get to iCloud. com, select all the photos and download the resulting zip file to a usb thumb drive on any machine with any browser. Then take that USB thumb drive to your Mac and copy the zip, then unzip it and import the files to iPhotos. Get a large USB stick, the zip will be large for 10,000 images. I'd format the USB thumb drive as exFAT to be compatible with both Windows and Mac.

oh wow.. I will try this too...
thank you very much...

 

[MacInWin]

omg... I just connected the phone to my old MBP and opened ImageCapture... and you can see the photos! (even though I get an alert saying the mac can't detect the device (???))

however: even though I have over 10,000 photos in the iPhone, ImageCapture shows only 22 photos.... (see attached s'shot..)
it even says "22 items" in the sidebar in the left..

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

That could well be because all but 22 of your images are actually stored in iCloud and not directly on the iPhone. Another good reason to get those images onto a USB drive before you do anything on the iPhone.

 

[kali89]

That could well be because all but 22 of your images are actually stored in iCloud and not directly on the iPhone. Another good reason to get those images onto a USB drive before you do anything on the iPhone.

oh brother.............
ok.. next week I'll go back to internet café and try the option of downloading the photos into a .zip file, then just transfer them to my mac..

once again thank you very much for your help...

(PS: theoretically I could just email the zip file to myself, yes? except it might be too big... ;~)

 

[IWT]

(PS: theoretically I could just email the zip file to myself, yes? except it might be too big... ;~)

Don't. File size way too big. Do as Jake said

Glad to read that you can connect your iPhone to the old Mac and that Image Capture worked, but Jake explained the 22 images aspect.

Follows Jake's advice.

Ian

 

[MacInWin]

oh brother.............
ok.. next week I'll go back to internet café and try the option of downloading the photos into a .zip file, then just transfer them to my mac..

once again thank you very much for your help...

(PS: theoretically I could just email the zip file to myself, yes? except it might be too big... ;~)

Just to be clear, read what I posted in post #7. You go to iCloud.com, log in, open Photos, select the images you want and then click the cloud icon with the down arrow. Photos will create the zip file with the images for you and offer to you to download it. You don't download into a zip file, you download a zip file.

To select all of the images, if that is what you want, you can click on the first one, then scroll to the last one and hold SHIFT and click on the last image and all of them between will be selected.

Yes, you could theoretically email the zip file, but it will be huge. You mentioned 10,000 images. If the average size is 2Mb, the 10,000 of them will be 20 GB. Images don't compress much when zipped, so as I said, you'll need a really big USB thumb drive. Or, you can break the download into pieces over multiple trips to the cafe, or over multiple USB sticks. Just select fewer of the images at a time for the download. Bottom line: It's a lot of data.

 

[pm-r]

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..

I'm coming in here a bit late, but will admit I don't do very much with photos or an iPhone, but if you would like to avoid some of the unknowns about using iCloud and what kind or does happen there with your photos, you can avoid it completely I'm just using another backup solution using iMazing.app, assuming you have a Mac with some availablel storage space, and how's your photos under your control without any fear of them being deleted or lost.

Transfer iPhone, iPad, or iPod photos to your Mac or PC computer

imazing.com

And more options and suggestions here:

Google Search

www.google.com

Just a thought for an alternative for you to possibly use if it would suit your use.




- Patrick
=======

 

[pm-r]

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...

I don't want to get this tread off-topic here, and I don't know what browser you are using that is "out of date", but if it is Safari, there is a good chance you could switch to using Firefox that possibly has an updated version that would qualify with most internet sites and allow you to use a browser on the internet to access them.


EDIT: you can find and download the Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) from here:
Extended Support Release

Firefox ESR 78.15.0, See All New Features, Updates and Fixes

www.mozilla.org

But you will need to be running macOS 10.9.x (Mavericks) as a minimum in order to use it.




- Patrick
=======

 

[kali89]

Just to be clear, read what I posted in post #7. You go to iCloud.com, log in, open Photos, select the images you want and then click the cloud icon with the down arrow. Photos will create the zip file with the images for you and offer to you to download it. You don't download into a zip file, you download a zip file.

yes I understand that.. it was just a manner of speaking..

ok, I will be in internet café in about 15 min., will attempt to download the .zip... wish me luck..

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

 

[kali89]

the DOWNLOAD button is grayed out...
(disabled) :-(

 

[kali89]

actually it was disabled because I hadn't selected any photos.. I had thought you hit DOWNLOAD and it would just download all the photos... (but what do aI know...)
also I was a bit unnerved... :-o

it turns out you can only download 1,000 photos at a time... real bummer.. it's really hard to know how many photos you are selecting after you select one photo and scroll down.. you stop scrolling and it's anybody's guess how many photos you have selected... if it's more than 1,000 I gotta find the exact spot where I stopped selecting last time and start over..

but well, it's a solution at least.. I think I will dl about 5,000 photos.. that should liberate enough storage space on the phone..

thank you again so much for all the help..

 

[kali89]

so far I have deleted about 5,000 photos from my iPhone, and not even one GB has been liberated... I just don't get this...

(& why when I viewed photos in phone in Image Capture the other day (which I also mentioned here) it only showed 22 photos? surely there's room in my phone (32GB) for a lot more than 22 photos..)

I don't quite get what is taking up so much storage room in my iPhone... :-(

I need to upgrade WhatsApp soon.. this is getting critical.. (& I can't even upgrade iOS sw yet, which I haven't done in approx a year (it requires 3+ GB), holy crapola...)
I'll have to go back to the internet café and dl the rest of the photos.. it's very time-consuming, I just didn't have time last time to stay longer and do the rest..

I will now look into the Firefox thing you mentioned earlier.. even this website doesn't work in my browsers on my mac... everything on this thread I have typed on the iPhone... whewwwww....

once again thank you very much for all your help...

 

[MacInWin]

32GB is not much storage these days. If you can, does Settings, General, iPhone Storage show what is taking up the room? I am beginning to suspect it is NOT images. The fact that Image capture only sees a few files on the phone, plus the fact that you have deleted a bunch with no significant change, and the small memory all are pointing to the possibility, or even probability, that Photos has moved the images OFF the iPhone to the Cloud already, leaving behind just very small pointers to the Cloud for where the images are really kept. Which means that something else is taking up the memory on the phone. Do you have videos or music stored on the iPhone? GPS maps?

 

[kali89]

tomorrow morning back to the internet café to do the rest of the photos... see what the phone looks like once I have deleted most of the photos..

(& yes I have been emptying out the "Recently Deleted" folder... )

thank you again..