Undo Download Originals

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Level 1

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Undo Download Originals

At some time in the past I turned off “Store photos in iCloud” and downloaded and stored the originals on my iPhone. That was a mistake. I now have 65GB of photos in their original size on my phone. I don’t want them on the phone—I want them on the iCloud. They are still on the iCloud so my iPad can access them. But now I can’t back up my iPhone to the iCloud. The phone wants to back up the 65GB of photos back to the iCloud, from where they originally came. But there is no room in my account for a duplicate 65GB backup set. What to do now to get these original size photos off my phone? If I delete them, will they not be deleted from the iCloud too? Even if not, how would I delete all 20k photos other than selecting each one one-at-a-time?

iPhone 7, iOS 14

Posted on Nov 18, 2020 7:53 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Camelot

Level 9

58,575 points

Nov 18, 2020 8:15 PM in response to KentinUT

You should just need to go to:

Settings -> iCloud -> Photos

From here you can re-enable the iCloud Photos feature along with the 'Optimize iPhone Storage'.

This should trigger an automatic cleanup of your photos. It will compare the photos on your phone to those stored in your iCloud account, then replace the large, original file on the phone with a thumbnail linked to the original stored in iCloud

This should maintain the integrity of your photos and reduce the storage on your phone.

Note that it will take some time to recognize any space saving since it happens in the background.

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Answer 2

KentinUT Author

Level 1

13 points

Nov 18, 2020 10:32 PM in response to KentinUT

Are you saying that I should buy more storage, then turn iCloud photos back on, and that the upload process would bypass photos on my phone already on the iCloud? How would it recognize the duplicate photos? By file name? I have a lot of photos taken at different times with different phones that wound up with the same file name. It is my understanding that iCloud will just add a number suffix to the next files with the same file name. If iCloud does not delete duplicates, then I will still have to run all the photos through a duplicate finder, at additional time and cost. Is there another way?

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Answer 3

Camelot

Level 9

58,575 points

Nov 19, 2020 11:18 AM in response to KentinUT

iCloud Photos de-duplication works. on a signature/checksum of the image, not the filename. It's too easy for different images to have the same file name (e.g. 'my photo.jpg'), so that is not a valid indicator. Instead it essentially does a byte-for-byte comparison of the photo data to determine if the local and cloud copies of the photos match.

Of your three options, #3 should work - iCloud might think you need more storage based on the size of your phone's data, but once the sync is complete you should have a better idea of the actual space needed, then you can downgrade your iCloud plan, assuming you save sufficient space.

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Answer 4

KentinUT Author

Level 1

13 points

Nov 18, 2020 10:20 PM in response to Camelot

That doesn’t work. When I turn iCloud photos back on, I get a message that more storage is needed.

I have three suggestions, but what would be the unintended consequences:

1. Cut and paste the photo albums in the phone’s internal storage to my PC hard drive, then run backup on the phone.

2. Backup the phone on iTunes, without syncing photos; then rerun backup, this time syncing photos to a folder which contains no photos, which would then delete all photos on the phone.

3. Purchase more storage. Then upload the photos on iPhone to iCloud. Run all the combined photos on iCloud through a program which finds and deletes duplicate photos. Then next month downgrade the storage plan to one just big enough to store all the photos after duplicates are removed.

However, I am unable to foresee the consequences of each option. Will they work? And is there another option?

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