Q: My photos are not restoring from my iCloud Backup !, My photos are not restoring from the iCloud Backup! What should I do to make it alright ? Please help !

Are you sure these photos are in your latest iCloud backup?  How are you proceeding to restore from the backup via iCloud?

B-rock

Do you have any of the other 2 backups still available to try and restore from?  iCloud holds your three most recent backups.  If none of them are able to restore your photos, there may have been an issue with backing them up.

B-rock

Then I'm afraid you are out of luck if the photos from your only backup are not working (assuming you don't have backups in iTunes either).  Not sure as to what exactly went wrong.

B-rock

I fixed this issue after a lot of time and pain (see below)

Seems to have come up on various threads so it seems to be an issue and should be escalated by Apple. They were none the wiser at the genius bar apart from telling me the iCloud backup is probably corrupted and I should call Apple care (as if that is going to do anything)

https://discussions.apple.com/message/18829957#18829957

https://discussions.apple.com/message/17988389#17988389

https://discussions.apple.com/message/17887940#17887940

https://discussions.apple.com/message/18811914#18811914

https://discussions.apple.com/message/18688593#18688593

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19426061#19426061

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19203831#19203831

https://discussions.apple.com/message/18390030#18390030

I experienced the same problem with the iCloud restore not working properly. I had my iPhone 4 replaced as the home button was defective. When attempting to restore an 9.5GB iCloud backup from the day before it just would not work properly. Firstly, half my apps did not restore, they would begin to download showing the progress indicator then just disappear, leaving my home screen naked. No big deal as apps can be downloaded again.

However, what was a big deal for me was the 1,625 photos on my camera roll, including many of the first year of my kid's life. The camera roll would say downloading x of 1,625 photos, download a few of them, then simply stop downloading any new shots. When I would restart the phone it did not show any downloading message, it believed the restore was complete. I tried about ten different restore scenarios, listed below, all of which gave me varying results (some resulting in all my apps restoring) but all of which would only give me some of my photos back.

What was a comfort was that I once got about 700 of the shots back. So the photos were still in the cloud rather than gone and this indicated that it was the restore process or the iCloud backup on my phone that was the problem. These are the things I tried in sequence as I despairingly tried to get my photos back...

Things I tried that DID NOT work

1) Erase all settings and attempt to restore again from scratch (four times)

2) Tried the restore from a different WiFi network (once)

3) Tried the restore from one WiFi network then switched to another once the restore 'hung' (once)

4) Tried the restore from an Apple store WiFi network (once)

5) Tried the restore from a previous iCloud backup (twice)

6) Had Apple replace the iPhone 4 (once)

With all of these I got a varying amount of my photos and apps back before it stopped restoring. I was also making the mistake (I learnt afterwards) of opening and moving between apps during the download to check progress.

Thing I tried that DID work

1) Did not plug the phone into my MacBook, I used the wall charger only to prevent any iTunes sync activity

2) Erase all settings and data, restore from the iCloud backup and input passwords in all the pop up windows once it reboots.

2) Open photos app gallery to see photos downloading and show the progress message "downloading xx of x,xxx"

3) Left it on this photo screen and did not touch the phone at all for the entire restore. I did not close the photo galley/camera roll app once, open any other apps.

Finally this time round it work and all my photos and apps restored in full. I am going to go back to syncing with iTunes as I don't trust iCloud for restores. It seems that iCloud does not handle photo restores that well, especially if the gallery is large. In short: Wall charger only, restore from iCloud, open Photos app, don't touch. Really hope this works for you too if you've had the same issue.

Thanks for sharing what worked for you!   Hopefully this helps others.

B-rock

Hey I have the same problem so are you saying that I should go into settings>general>reset>erase all contents and settings then go when the menu appears select restore from iCloud backup and let it restore and my photos should be in my camera roll. Because I did this in my first restore Because iOS failed to download properly on my iPhone and I had no choice to restore please answer this it would be great it would really help. Thankyou!

PS or could I just do the iCloud restore on iTunes again and hope the photos get back onto my iPhone

Just follow the erase all contents reset process. Plug the phone into the wall charger, not via USB to your laptop or PC (avoid it syncing). Then restore from the cloud, input the passwords when requested when iOS boots up. Then open the Photos app and leave the phone on this view. Don't go to any other apps or make calls etc. Just leave it there till your photos all download. They will all be in the iCloud backup so don't stress.

can you please high lite for me steps i should take to restore all my photos. lost my iphone 4 and baught iphone 5 but icloud managed to restore only 200 out of 800 photos and i acn read latest bck up is incomplete. is it becouse i have exceeded 5 gb icloud capacity or. please just give us steps how to recover them. thanks.

<Email Edited by Host>

Good morning from MNL!

I have the same issue. i wanted to retrieve all my pictures from icloud to my iphone once again.

Can you give me the steps please? I badly needed to get it from icloud because icloud storage is already full.

Thank you so much.