How to avoid the accidental deletion of important photos in Photos iOS or iPadOS

When we are making a thorough spring cleaning of our Photos Library it is easy to make a mistake and accidentally delete one of our most important photos.

It is essential to have a recent backup that is including or photos before we even think of emptying the Recently Deleted album, because we cannot lock photos to prevent them from being deleted. All we can do is to make sure, that the photos we want to keep are not displayed, when we want to select photos for deletion.

It will depend on the system version, how we can make it easier to notice when we are about to delete important photos.

On iOS 16 or earlier - just be very careful:

The best we could do on iOS 16 or older system versions would be to mark the photos we want to keep safe as favorites ♡. Then we will be seeing the favorite heart on our keepers, when we view the Recently Deleted album and will be warned, if we included an important photo.

Don't use mass delete. Empty the Recently Deleted album, as soon as it so full, that you cannot see all photos in it at a glance. Better be save than sorry. This will work on all system versions.

On iOS 16.1 and iCloud Photos:

On iOS 16.1 or later we can split our Photos Library into two separate libraries, if we are willing to invest into iCloud Photos. I am using the iCloud Shared Library only to share my library with myself. It is highly convenient on an iPhone or iPad two have two separate Photos Libraries, one with the most important photos and one with the photos that still need working on. How to use iCloud Shared Photo Library - Apple Support

I now have to separate libraries on my iPad and iPhone, a personal library and a shared library and can toggle with on click to see the personal library or the shared library or both together.

• All new photos are arriving in the personal library. That is the working space, where I am sorting, tagging, or deleting photos.
• The important photos I want to keep or to show to other people will be moved to the Shared iCloud Photos Library.
• When I delete photos, I switch to the Personal iCloud Photos Library. Then it is impossible to select or see the photos in the Shared library, where my best photos are, so they are safe from accidental deletion or other blunder.

On iOS 18.4 or later - use the filter:

On an iPhone, that can be upgraded to iOS 18.4 we can use a different approach, without iCloud. iT is one of the really nice new features of iOS 18.

• Add all photos, that you do not want to delete to some album.
• Then use the filter "not in any album" to show only photos, that are not in an album, when you want to select photos for deletion and are about to delete photos.

You will find the filter option "not in any album" in the tab with the two arrow (up and down) below the All Photos view, but only on system version 18.4 or later.

On a Mac use keywords and smart albums

On a Mac we can use any of the methods mentioned above. Additionally, we have the power of keywords to tag important photos as "Protected".

Then we can set up a smart album, where the important photos are excluded. For example:

• The rule "Keyword is not Protected" will only show the photos , that are not tagged as protected.
• The rule "Album is not any " will show only photos, that are not in any album.