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My phone was running low on storage space so I bought the 50Gs to store my pictures on instead of my device. However, my photos are not moving there even though I have plenty of space now on my iCloud, have all the settings set for them to, and have tried backing up my iCloud multiple times. I don’t understand what I’m not doing or why it’s not working?
iPhone 6s, iOS 13
You cannot move photos to the cloud and then delete them from your device. That’s not how iCloud works or how iCloud Photos works. iCloud is not off device storage. It is a syncing service that allows you to see all of your photos on all of your devices and allows all actions that you take with your photos to be reflected across devices. IOW, if you delete a photo on your phone, you delete it everywhere.
Backing up to iCloud doesn’t allow you to store the photos in the cloud either. If you use iCloud Photos, photos are not included in the backup.
When you use iCloud Photos, if you turn on Optimize Storage, that will help you save some space on your device, but you still need space in iCloud to use for the photos to sync to. Maybe this will help.
Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support
You cannot move photos to the cloud and then delete them from your device. That’s not how iCloud works or how iCloud Photos works. iCloud is not off device storage. It is a syncing service that allows you to see all of your photos on all of your devices and allows all actions that you take with your photos to be reflected across devices. IOW, if you delete a photo on your phone, you delete it everywhere.
Backing up to iCloud doesn’t allow you to store the photos in the cloud either. If you use iCloud Photos, photos are not included in the backup.
When you use iCloud Photos, if you turn on Optimize Storage, that will help you save some space on your device, but you still need space in iCloud to use for the photos to sync to. Maybe this will help.
Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support
Oh okay thank you for replying. I knew like pictures wouldn’t load completely on my device because the Optimize Storage was saving space, but I was hoping more photos would do that and save space after I bought more space on iCloud. They’re all still completely saved to my device. That’s what I was confused about
ICloud/Device Storage
