Is this possible? I have more room on my iPhone and laptop than I do in iCloud (don't want to purchase more storage). I have saved and printed older photos, but newer ones are more vulnerable to being lost, so I'd like those to remain in the cloud.
iPhone 8
iCloud is strictly a synchronization service. Any changes you make on one device, including deletions, will be reflected on all devices and in iCloud.
You would need to copy the files you wish to keep first to a computer folder, or an archival storage system like Dropbox before you delete anything on the iPhone.
iCloud is strictly a synchronization service. Any changes you make on one device, including deletions, will be reflected on all devices and in iCloud.
You would need to copy the files you wish to keep first to a computer folder, or an archival storage system like Dropbox before you delete anything on the iPhone.
Ok, so how do I get the files back on the phone if I can't use the photo app or iCloud Drive (which is syncing my documents from my laptop). Where can I put them on the phone that is separate from iCloud?
There may be alternate photo storage apps in the App Store that may work to keep a separate library of images not sync’d to iCloud. I don’t know any, but they may exist (I don’t use iCloud photo at all and keep my master photo library on my Mac and sync selected photos to my iPhone or iPads with iTunes).
Beware of any of the crypto or vault style photo album apps. They have a tendency to be short lived in terms of development and often get abandoned or pulled from the App Store and people find themselves locked out of their pictures (was a rash of that when a few small photo vault developers abandoned their apps when iOS went to strictly 64-bit code).
Thanks for the reply. If I save all the files on my computer/dropbox and delete from my phone (thus deleting from iCloud), can I put some back on my phone without them getting put back on iCloud?
Not if using the iOS photo app with iCloud photo turned on. Anything you put back will sync, just like anything you remove also sync’s.
Ok, thank you! Just curious, do you use iPhoto on your Mac, or what is your master photo library?
Sync only recent photos/videos to iCloud, delete old from iCloud, but keep all on iPhone
