Q: More photos in settings than photos app shows

I have this question also. In my case I restored off my laptop onto a new iphone 5S. All my photos were restored. Then later on after installing iOs 8.0.2, signing up to iCloud etc I found that most of the photos had vanished. In Setting>General>About it says there are 257 photos (the number i expected) however when I go into Photos there are only 53 photos total. (In both the Years and Albums). Please if anyone can help. I'd really like to be able to find those vanished photos.

I have a theory on this one...  I believe it is related to photo stream and sharing.  if you have everything backed up (iCloud or via iTunes), try disabling the sharing and iCloud/photo stream settings under the Camera/Photos in settings.  check and see if the numbers match then to what it shows in your photos app.  then re-enable them and see if some photos are showing again that are equal to the "missing" ones?

also be aware that the new presentation for photos is exceptionally confusing.  "recent photos" does not equal to all the photos on the devices...  you have to go to the actual "photos" tab to see all photos on the device (and also in photo stream).  not sure why apple chose to make photos so confusing (and such a disaster with the elimination of iPhoto from iOS).  this may all make sense when they take the iCloud photos piece out of beta and bring photos up to speed on Yosemite and iOS, but it is definitely confusing for users at the moment.

Other posters have reported that this can be resolved by going to Settings>iCloud>Storage>Manage Storage, click on your device and then Turn Photo Library off and back on (under Next Backup Size).

Worth a shot!

Cheers,

GB

Hi yellow.jacket,

Just an FYI - Recently Added contains the last 30 days of Photo Stream photos (shared between devices), and Camera Roll photos (those photos taken by the device you are looking at). iCloud has always only saved 30 days of Photo Stream photos. You can keep up to 1000 on your device, but if you turn off Photo Stream and then turn it back on, only the last 30 days will re-download from iCloud.

Cheers,

GB

that makes sense Gail...  I think the confusion lies in the elimination of a clear album of photos that exist in "photo stream".  so far as i can tell, you have no way of seeing what is actually in "photo stream" on a device on iOS 8 now.  I'd say it'd be a really good idea for people to make sure they back up their photos to their computer in a known place until Apple makes clear what they are doing with the "cloud".  Photos are too precious to many people, so be careful with this!  And although backups to iCloud or iTunes might save them, you still have to restore devices and some backups may not be in iCloud (it isn't like "time machine" on a Mac, but does seem to save some recent snapshots).  You are best using iPhoto/Aperture (or whatever works on Windows for pulling photos off).

Right - photos should always be imported on a regular basis:

PHOTO IMPORT IOS TO MAC/PC

Neither a Camera Roll or Photo Stream is intended to be a long-term storage facility for photos. Unfortunately, many folks don't understand this, and believe that they are a safe storage place. But, as I indicated earlier, Photo Stream is meant to be used primarily for sharing photos, and iCloud will only keep 30 days worth. Camera Roll photos are only as safe as your device. If you lose it, have it stolen, or if it is inadvertently destroyed, the only safe place for you to recover your photos from is a PC, Mac, or external cloud service like Dropbox or Flikr.

Cheers,

GB

I'm having a similar problem, except I have My Photo Stream turned off on my phone and on my Mac Pro (I prefer to just regularly upload my pics to my comp and then save them on a harddrive), so I'm mystified as to why I currently only have 13 photos on my phone, but my storage summary is telling me I have 584 photos. I even deleted everything out of my Recently Deleted folder. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I had the same issue.

Go to Settings -> icloud -> Storage -> Manage Storage -> icloud Photo Library - > Delete.

This fixed the issue.

I already did that (multiple times) on my phone and on my computer and no luck. o_O

And you have tried syncing your phone to iTunes and unchecking the Sync Photos box altogether? If you do that, be sure that the photos on your phone have been safely backed up.

If that doesn't help, then the only other post I have seen on resolving this problem involves restoring your device to Factory Settings, and setting up the device as new....

Cheers,

GB

Oops, meant to reply to you and replied to the OP, my bad. Anyway, I already did that (multiple times) on my phone and on my computer and no luck. Here are some screencaps of whatever the heck is going on with my phone. As you can see, I only have 15 photos in my Photo Library, which is turned off in my iCloud settings, but my Storage indicates I have 1.2 gigs (584 photos according to my iTunes storage summary) worth of photos? So confused.

I tried that, but alas, no luck. Thank you anyway. I guess I'm going to have to restore to Factory Settings. *sigh*

Sorry I don't have a better solution for you

Best of luck!

GB

No worries, thanks for trying.