My iPhone storage is about full with photos. I also have an iCloud account with the photos. How can I erase the photos on my iPhone, and still have them in the cloud and the access them on my phone when I want to view them?

My iPhone storage is about full with photos. I also have an iCloud account with the photos. How can I erase the photos on my iPhone, and still have them in the cloud and the access them on my phone when I want to view them?

iPhone 7

Posted on Jul 8, 2020 4:45 PM

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Posted on Jul 8, 2020 6:12 PM

You can't but you can save space on the phone by using the Optimize Storage option. iCloud Photos is a syncing service. Any photo you delete from a device where iCloud Photos is turned on will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to iCloud Photos. You can potentially reduce the storage space required on a device by turning on Optimize Storage. See: Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support


Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.



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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 8, 2020 6:12 PM in response to Nomobuehler

You can't but you can save space on the phone by using the Optimize Storage option. iCloud Photos is a syncing service. Any photo you delete from a device where iCloud Photos is turned on will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to iCloud Photos. You can potentially reduce the storage space required on a device by turning on Optimize Storage. See: Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support


Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.



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My iPhone storage is about full with photos. I also have an iCloud account with the photos. How can I erase the photos on my iPhone, and still have them in the cloud and the access them on my phone when I want to view them?

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